Marine Le Pen lays out radical vision to govern France

5/3/2015

By Anne-Sylvaine Chassany and Roula Khalaf

She calls for the collapse of the EU and talks about nationalising banks. She sees the US as a purveyor of dangerous policies and Russia as a more suitable friend. She wants to bring an end to immigration and believes the republic is under Islamist assault

Radical as Marine Le Pen’s vision for France may be, the prospect of her National Front (FN) policies becoming reality is no longer pure fantasy.

“It’s the Front’s moment,” Ms Le Pen declares in an interview with the Financial Times.

Two months after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, the far-right party has cemented its standing as the most dynamic political force in a frightened and frustrated country; its 46-year-old leader now regarded as a possible winner of the presidency in 2017. Polls place the FN ahead of the centre-right UMP and ruling Socialist parties in the first round of this month’s local elections, with one giving it about 33 per cent of the vote.

The soaring popularity of a party that for decades seemed consigned to the fringes has raised alarm bells across the political spectrum. President François Hollande spoke this week of the need to “snatch” voters back from the FN, calling its rise, in an interview with Le Parisien, “a collective failure”.

Much of the credit for the FN’s political momentum goes to Ms Le Pen’s deliberate efforts to enlarge her base since taking over the party in 2011, but also to the malaise afflicting a France in which the economy has stagnated for the past three years while unemployment has risen above 10 per cent.

Ultimately, quitting the euro is the only solution, she says. “We are told it’s going to be catastrophic, that it will rain frogs, that the Seine will turn into a river of blood,” she says. “There aren’t that many practical problems.”

To detoxify the FN’s brand, she has distanced herself from anti-semitic comments made by her father and party founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has described the gas chambers as “a detail” of the second world war. There are times, she says, when she and her father disagree. “But I am the president of the National Front and he’s the honorary president. I determine the . . . line.”

In a small office in a nondescript modern building in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, the fast-talking Ms Le Pen comes across as a single-minded politician, at ease with every subject while glossing over challenges or contradictions in her policies. “I’m not here to run a boutique. I’m here to reach power and to return it to the French people,” she says. “That’s my role.” Constantly in motion, and seemingly in a rush, she tends to sit on the edge of her seat, fiddles with her pen, combs her fingers through her blond hair or inhales on her electronic cigarette.

Much of the political class still considers the FN a xenophobic party that spreads the politics of fear and has sanitised its façade but not its substance. A new book, Marine Le Pen Prise Aux Mots (Marine Le Pen taken at her word), questions whether the updating of her vocabulary amounts to real change at the FN.

What is clear is that Ms Le Pen’s promise of simple solutions to seemingly intractable social and economic problems is striking a chord with a disenchanted public.

She sneers when asked to judge the government’s plan to tackle homegrown jihadism, rattling off her own list of hardline measures, including a zero-tolerance policy towards attacks on French secularism, enforcement of French-speaking preachers in mosques and stripping dual-nationality jihadis who fight abroad of their French citizenship. Going further, Ms Le Pen also wants a radical overhaul of French foreign policy in which relations with the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would be restored and those with the likes of Qatar and Turkey, which she alleges support terrorism, reviewed.

She calls the US “the most discredited power in the [Middle East] region” and says it cannot be seen as a partner in the global struggle against jihadis. Instead, defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the group known as Isis, will only be achieved by involving Russia.

On Ukraine, too, the French government has largely followed the wrong policies, she argues, blaming the EU for provoking the crisis and the US for encouraging a rupture with Moscow. “Rejecting Russia, as we are stupidly doing, it . . . is throwing Russia into the arms of China and we will have reason to kick ourselves for it,” she says.

That Moscow is looking to build ties with political parties in Europe, a source of anxiety in EU capitals, is perfectly legitimate, she insists, defending a €9m loan to her party by a Russian bank said to be close to president Vladimir Putin. Not one bank in France or across Europe was willing to lend to the FN, she says: “If tomorrow an American bank wants to buy the loan, I would immediately accept, if it is at a more favourable rate.”

To expand her base among the working class, this supposedly far-right politician has not hesitated to borrow themes from the left. She has, for example, championed public services and presented herself as the protector of workers and farmers in the face of “wild and anarchic globalisation”.

Leaving the euro would mean the end of the eurozone, she says, but it would allow France to boost exports with a weaker Franc. Because nearly all public debt would be converted into the Franc, the overall burden would remain unchanged, she insists. When asked about the risk that foreign investors, who hold about two-thirds of French sovereign debt, might refuse to roll over loans or demand higher interest rates, she replies: “Of course there are issues but the benefits are much greater.”

Ms Le Pen’s economic programme will face increasing scrutiny as the 2017 campaign draws closer. In the meantime, her focus is on building the FN’s local government expertise: for all its rapid growth, the party boasts only two MPs and 15 local mayors, a few of whom have already courted controversy.

Is the FN ready to rule? Ms Le Pen shrugs. It’s not experience that France needs, she says: “We need to get out of the system. We’re in a system that is a little rotten. We need a fresh pair of eyes.”

Marine Le Pen in her own words

On immigration and jihadism:

Anarchic mass immigration over the past 25 years has created places where the [French] Republic has retrenched at the benefit of religious laws imposed by a few . . . There’s a link between immigration and radicalisation.”

Anti-Muslim sentiment:

There is no Islamophobia in France. There aren’t any anti-Muslim acts — or no more than acts against women . . . or short people. But there is a rise in anti-Semitism.”

France leaving the euro:

We are told it is going to be catastrophic — that it will rain frogs, that the Seine will turn into a river of blood. It is the apocalypse, according to Barroso, Juncker and Co. There aren’t that many practical problems.”

Vladimir Putin:

Putin is most probably an authoritarian leader, but is it possible to govern Russia without being authoritarian? To reject Russia the way we do . . . is pushing Russia into the arms of China. And we will kick ourselves.”

Her father and party founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen:

“It is like the weather in Brittany: it’s sunny several times a day . . . it rains several times a day. He’s a character. We talk. We sometimes disagree.”

The National Front:

Globalisation has brought more pain than happiness . . . the pendulum is swinging back. It is the nations’ time. It is the Front’s moment.”

Germany:

I am not against Germany. I think Germany defends its interests. What I see is that France does not defend its interests.”

Her political inexperience:

The French need new people who break free from bad habits. We are in a system that is a little rotten. We need a fresh pair of eyes.”

What they say about her...

François Hollande, president of France:

It is a collective failure when an extreme-right party is the first party of France. It does not mean that those who vote for the FN are convinced by its theses. Because this temptation is anger in the face of crisis [and] an expression of rejection and fear.”

Manuel Valls, French prime minister:

“In France, the extreme right and Marine Le Pen are at the gates of power. And as a man of the left, I will never resign myself to it. Because the weakest would be the first to suffer. And it would be a major blow, fatal perhaps, against Europe.”

Timeline of the Front National

1972: National Front is created in a move to unify French far-right groups that challenged the independence of Algeria. Jean-Marie Le Pen becomes president.

1974: FN wins 0.7 per cent of votes in presidential elections.

1976: Mr Le Pen’s family apartment in Paris is dynamited. Marine, eight at the time, is present. The case is never solved.

1986: Thirty-five FN candidates are elected to parliament.

1988: Mr Le Pen secures 14.4 per cent of votes in the first round of presidential elections.

1998: Split in the FN after a power struggle led by Bruno Mégret

1999: FN attracts 5.7 per cent of votes in European elections.

2002: Mr Le Pen makes it to the second round of presidential elections with 16.86 per cent of votes before losing to Jacques Chirac.

2011: Marine Le Pen succeeds her father as FN president; Mr Le Pen becomes the party’s honorary chairman.

2014: FN wins 25 per cent of votes in European elections and makes big gains in local elections.

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