Marine Le Pen has softened her father’s toxic brand – and could well win

Marine Le Pen has gone a long way to ensure that the sins of the father are not borne by the daughter. Far enough to win the Presidency of the Fifth Republic? The polls suggest probably not, but then again…

The father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founded the National Front party in 1972. In 2018 the daughter changed its name to National Rally in a bid to distance it from its racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim roots. She had already expelled her father from the party and ostracised him in a bitter public row. She has softened the party’s edges to make it, and herself, electable. In this weekend’s first round of voting in the Presidential election it will be a surprise if she does not go through to the 24 April run-off along with the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron.

And then? That depends on how many far-left voters swing round to meet her in the second round after their candidate is knocked out in the first, and how much of the electorate accept that the daughter is not the father.

As a young correspondent in Paris in the 1980s I had the pleasure of meeting a gang of Jean Marie Len Pen’s thugs after a rally of 50,000 supporters by the statue of Joan of Arc. As the loudspeakers blared out Verdi’s “March of the Hebrew Slaves” I was pushed into a shop entrance and held by the throat against the door by a man who demanded to see my passport. I scare easily, but can do a passable impression of bravery (or stupidity). “Qui êtes vous? La police?” I responded.

The incident passed without violence. Not so a few years later when I saw seven or eight National Front bodyguards set about a Muslim man with batons and coshes after he was reckless enough to spit at Le Pen during a walkabout in a town near Marseilles.

The two incidents were emblematic of what the National Front was. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a former paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion and had served in the Algerian War. When Algeria won independence, many French people living there were forced to flee and their descendants, known as “pieds noirs”, were a solid base of support when the party was formed. By that time Le Pen had already been elected to the National Assembly. He’d also founded a society selling LPs featuring Nazi speeches and German military songs.

He constantly baited minorities. In 1988, after having described the Holocaust as a mere “detail of history” he responded to criticism from the Minister of Public Service, Michel Durafour, by calling him “Durafour-Crematoire”. “Four” is French for oven, “crematoire” means crematorium. Durafour was Jewish.

His daughter, born in 1968 and the youngest of three, has had to live in the shadow of all this. She studied law at the University of Paris II and went on to work as an attorney from 1992 to 1998, at times defending illegal immigrants facing deportation. In 1998 she joined the staff at the National Front, rising to become party vice-president in 2003 and the following year winning a seat in the European Parliament.

In 2011 she became President of the National Front and set about changing the party. The following year she finished a strong third in the Presidential election, winning 18% of the first-round vote. In 2017 she got through to the second round but was easily beaten by Macron in the second. Much of the media reaction was that French democracy had seen off the dangers of extreme politics again. However, she’d won 34% of the vote, almost double her father’s total when he reached the second round in 2002 when Jacques Chirac won. The reaction had been similar then. Now polls suggest she could be in the high 40% if she reaches the second round, and that there’s a slim possibility she could win.

The lesson Marine Le Pen learned from 2012 and 2017 was that she needed to present the National Front as mainstream, even if most of its policies were not. She knew her seriously poor performance against Macron in TV debates had cost her votes. She would now play the serious stateswomen, the politician ready to lead the country, someone you could tell your friends you voted for.

She ditched her father, ditched the party name, and ditched calls to leave the Euro. She has, at times, even ditched her own name. Most campaign posters refer to her simply as “Marine” which suggests the party is aware that the Le Pen brand is still toxic to many. But she is not her father. She has been vocal in her criticism of anti-Semitism and overseen a purge of senior party officials with extreme right-wing views. She even loves cats, so much so that a glossy magazine visit to the Le Pen home is not complete without a “Marine holding cat” picture. She lives alone and says after being twice divorced she is happy being single. 

The rise in support reflects the softer image but also the unease in the country on a range of domestic issues. She opposed the severity of France’s Covid lockdown and then the slow rate of vaccination. While Macron has been playing world leader in the Ukraine crisis Le Pen has focussed on crime, the cost of living, immigration, and the perceived threat of Islamism. Her praise of Putin in recent years does not appear to be an issue for people thinking of voting for her.

One of the reasons Le Pen now appears more respectable is that a candidate further to the right than she has ever been has arrived on the scene. Éric Zemmour is far more anti-Islam and anti-immigration and has convictions for inciting racial hatred. The bombastic TV pundit gives her cover as he becomes the bête noire of liberal France.

But Le Pen’s policies have not softened as much as her profile. She still seeks to shut the door to asylum seekers, promises a referendum on immigration, will remove benefits from immigrants, and wants it to become law that French workers are hired before foreigners. The Muslim headscarf would be banned from being worn in public places. She also wants to opt out of parts of the European Convention of Human Rights.

This all appeals to the traditional far right in France, and increasingly a lot of it appeals to the former Communist voting regions in the now mostly de-industrialised north. Given that the Republicains candidate, Valerie Pecresse, is struggling, and that the radicality of Zemmour has changed perceptions of Le Pen, a mistake by Macron, or increasing momentum for the National Front, could put the Élysée in sight.   

Her father never got close, the idea of him being in the Élysée Palace was anathema to most French people. The daughter has come a long way in changing the brand. In two weeks’ time we will find out if “Marine” is mightier than “Le Pen”.