By ditching the National Front, Le Pen is playing Macron at his own game

Everybody knows that Marine Le Pen can’t beat Emmanuel Macron, don’t they? What does she have to lose? Nothing, it seems. She has now declared that she will run as an independent candidate, and not stand for the National Front. Marine’s move is surprising and clever in a madcap way. Anything that Macron can do I can do stranger, she is saying. Macron has reinvented himself as an outsider taking on the establishment — even though everyone knows he is a former banker and Hollande economics adviser. Well, Marine is saying, I can pretend that I am an independent too. Macron’s greatest weakness is that he was tarred by association with Hollande and the elite French left. Marine’s biggest problem is that the FN was still too toxic for the French mainstream. Macron has successfully rebranded himself by dropping his party. Why can’t Le Pen? It’s a gamble, that is certain. Until tonight the on dit among French political experts that Marine Le Pen’s real strategy has always been to win the presidency in 2022 once she has successfully dismantled the French right.