Try as he might Emmanuel Macron and his party are unable to arrest the popularity of the National Rally. A month out from the European elections, the latest poll has their principal candidate, Jordan Bardella, on 32 points, double the score of Macron’s representative, Valerie Hayer.
The latest head of state with dubious ethics to be courted by Macron is Xi Jinping
Hayer and Bardella have clashed twice in recent days in live television debates, and on both occasions Hayer has condemned as ‘shameful’ the National Rally’s benevolence towards Vladimir Putin in the years leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That this strategy doesn’t appear to be working for the presidential camp is not a surprise. As Bardella has pointed out, the National Rally wasn’t the only party to have made eyes at Putin in the last decade; Macron wined and dined Putin at Versailles in May 2017, just weeks after being elected president.
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