Far-right leader hails ‘victory in itself’ and vows to
fight on after winning more than 40% of the vote
Kim
Willsher in Paris
Sun 24 Apr
2022 19.42 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/24/whats-next-for-marine-le-pen-france-election
It was
third time unlucky for Marine Le Pen, who failed to convince French voters to
elect her president on Sunday.
She
detoxified her far-right National Rally party and threw out the Holocaust
denying, xenophobic thugs – including her own father – softened her image with
stories of how much she adores her cats and appeared on television with
reassuring smiles and a wardrobe of soothingly neutral coloured clothes.
She even
dropped Frexit – though many argued that her intention to create an “alliance”
of European nations within the European Union was effectively leaving the EU by
stealth – dropped support for the death penalty and apparently abandoned the
idea of banning the right to dual nationality while remaining firmly
anti-immigration.
But despite
repeatedly trumpeting her rival Emmanuel Macron’s alleged “arrogance” and
“disdain for the French people”, her programme still did not appeal to enough
voters to give her the keys to the Élysée Palace.
On Sunday
night, Le Pen conceded defeat while claiming her projected 42% share of the
vote represented “a victory in itself” and said she would continue the
political fight against Macron.
“Millions
of our compatriots have chosen us and change. We are more determined than ever
and our determination to defend the French people is greater than ever. This
defeat is in itself a form of hope,” she told supporters.
Warning
that the next five years would be “as brutal as the last five years” she
pledged: “I will continue my commitment to France and the French. It’s not
over. In a few weeks we have the legislative elections.”
Her speech,
which did not include the traditional congratulations to the winner, ended with
a rendition of La Marseillaise.
Le Pen’s
promise to continue the fight and “never abandon France” throws in doubt her
pledge to relinquish her presidential ambitions. She had said she would not
stand again but her speech left the door open to another bid to lead France. At
53 years old, she is still a youngster in French political terms, though
Macron, 44, and his team have lowered the age average by some decades. However,
she has also indicated she will not give up politics altogether to spend more
time with her cats.
“I have
become a cat breeder. It’s a passion. One can do politics while having a
profession, or turn a passion into a profession,” she told RTL radio last year.
Last month,
she told France’s Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche: “A priori I will not
stand [for president] again. But I will continue to do what I have done for
years, I will defend the French. I don’t know in what role, but it will be in
one where I am most effective.”
Le Pen took
over her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National party in 2011 and set about
cleaning up its image. Le Pen père had caused a political earthquake in France
in 2002 when he unexpectedly won a place in the second round of the
presidential with only 16.9% of the vote. Marine Le Pen scored 17.9% in the
first round of the 2012 presidential election in which the socialist François
Hollande faced Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round. Hollande won. In 2017, Le
Pen scored 21.3% in the first round and faced Macron in the second. Macron won
and Le Pen changed the party name to the Rassemblement National (RN).
This time,
Le Pen increased her first round score to 23.25%. However, the far-right vote
was split between her and Éric Zemmour, who scored 7.1%, suggesting her score
could have been much higher.
Antoine
Bristielle, director of the Observatory of Opinion at the left-leaning
Jean-Jaurès Foundation, said Le Pen could face an internal party struggle if
she stepped back from frontline politics. Le Pen handed over the reins of her
party to the up-and-coming far-right star Jordan Bardella, a 26-year-old son of
Italian immigrants who grew up in a gritty Paris banlieue. There are several
other youngsters waiting in the wings, including her niece Marion Maréchal, who
dumped family loyalty to support Zemmour in the first round.
“A danger
for the radical right family is that there will be an internal war to take over
as leader,” Bristielle said.
“Even if
Marine Le Pen is not great at campaigning, she is very good at organising the
party. Her strength has been to maintain a united front within it. The risk is
that this will fracture without her.”
This article was amended on 25 April 2022. It
was François Hollande who won the 2012 election, not Nicolas Sarkozy as an
earlier version said.
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