When asked to define Marine Le Pen in a single word, a majority of French people came up with ‘cats’ rather than ‘extreme-right’. In the past five years, she has worked hard at ‘detoxifying’ her brand. She softened her platform so that she no longer advocates Frexit or even leaving the Euro. Unlike Eric Zemmour, the former Le Figaro columnist, she insisted Islam was compatible with the values of the Republic. It’s Islamism that isn’t, she said.
Having fired her then-85-year-old father for anti-Semitism in 2015, she tried to reshape the old Front National. She changed the party name in 2018 (to Rassemblement National or National Rally). Throughout, everyone including her dear old dad heaped abuse on her, claiming the RN was losing its USP. Why would people vote for a less free-market clone of Les Républicains, Sarkozy’s old party?
There’s a widening French constituency that will vote for her precisely because she works the great and the good into such fury
But what Marine achieved on the sly was relatability, and that may prove a quality that will work to her advantage in the TV debate tonight.
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