Marine Le Pen

Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron debate ahead of Sunday's final round vote in the French election.

Secularism: Asked about her promise to ban the wearing of the hijab in public, Le Pen insists she is not anti-Islam but “opposed to the Islamist ideology”. She says Macron’s policies against Islamism “has not been effective”. The hijab is “a uniform imposed by Islamists” and should be banned in public. It is confusing all the problems; confusing Islam with Islamism.” He says France, “the home of the Enlightenment”, would be the first country in the world to ban religious signs in public space. Macron says he would never ban signs of religious belief in public because doing so would be contrary to France’s constitution: “You will incite a civil war if you ban the veil,” he said. He accuses Le Pen of being a climate sceptic, observing: “There is not a single ecological proposal in your project.” He criticises her proposal to dismantle windfarms that have already been built and ban future ones. Crime: Le Pen says crime and security is “an absolutely essential issue. Le Pen attacks the president’s “appalling economic record”, dubbing Macron “the Mozart of finance”. She is sceptical about Macron’s claim to have cut unemployment from 9.6% to 7.4%; he defends it with international data. Asked to open the debate by stating what kind of president she would be, Marine Le Pen says she would be “a president of daily life, of the value of work … A president of national fraternity, uniting the national around a collective project. Le Pen calls this “an insufferable injustice”; she says she will place the retirement age at between 60 and 62, with 42 years of contributions required for a full state pension. Macron says he has traversed a “difficult time” with the country, a time when “fears, concerns are there”. He aims to continue to do so because “I believe that we can make our country more independent, and stronger”. He also notes that Le Pen’s promise to raise salaries by 10% is not in her gift: “It is employers who decide that.” Macron adds that his government’s measures have kept inflation significantly lower in France than in its EU neighbours. “You are dependent on Russian power, and Mr Putin”, Macron says. Macron says purchasing power has risen under his presidency but admits “life is becoming more expensive”. He says it is more effective to cap prices than to cut taxes, and notes that Le Pen voted against price caps in parliament.

In the climax of France's presidential campaign, centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right contender Marine Le Pen will meet Wednesday evening in a ...

“This is a campaign of profound dissatisfaction for many French people,” Brice Teinturier, managing director of polling firm IPSOS, said Wednesday on LCI television. She also aims at demonstrating that she has the stature of a potential president, and at promoting what she says are realistic proposals. He will seek to convince leftist voters that his pro-business stance shouldn't deter them from choosing him. Among them are banning Muslim headscarves and scaling back relations with the European Union and NATO. Macron, a pro-European centrist, emerged ahead from the April 10 first round and is leading in opinion polls. Both candidates need to broaden support before Sunday's vote.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen go head-to-head in a high-stakes TV debate on Wednesday, seeking to sway ...

Click on the player above to watch the debate or scroll below for live commentary in English. Which way his left-leaning supporters choose to vote on Sunday could prove crucial – and many of them have already expressed a visceral rejection of Macron's policies. Le Pen cleared her schedule this week to concentrate on preparing for the face-off, hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2017 debate fiasco that ended her hopes of pulling off an upset win five years ago.

French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is working overtime to rebrand herself and her National Rally (RN) party as the common people's choice ...

Before triggering Article 16, the president is required to consult the prime minister, the presidents of the National Assembly, the president of the Senate, and the Constitutional Council as well as to address the nation. However, Le Pen can bypass the courts and parliament by misusing Article 11 of the French Constitution to take her measures directly to the people via referendums. Just as in the United States after the presidential election of Donald Trump, France will likely experience an uptick in engagement and protests should Le Pen win. Previous administrations laid the groundwork for a potential Le Pen takeover by creating legal and rhetorical weapons that she will use to justify an even more palpable restriction of civil liberties in violation not only of the French Constitution but also of international treaties. Le Pen knows very well that the legislation she intends to implement may be seen as discriminatory and could be rejected by the courts. For state-funded charities, a Le Pen presidency is a serious concern, as she will undoubtedly want to cut all funding to associations fighting racism and discrimination, defending the environment, and helping refugees. Le Pen intends to hold a referendum of this sort to modify the parliamentary voting system into one of proportional representation, with a caveat: Two-thirds of the seats in the assembly would be allocated proportionally, but the last third would be reserved for the party that obtained the most votes overall—a so-called majority bonus. Her campaign promises include a number of measures that appear to violate the French Constitution as well as international agreements, such as European Union treaties. If Le Pen is elected on Sunday, the first few weeks of her term will be decisive. Her campaign promises include a number of measures that appear to violate the French Constitution as well as international agreements, such as European Union treaties. Winning 23.3 percent of the vote in the first round of France’s presidential election on April 10, Le Pen advanced to the April 24 runoff against Macron—giving her a real shot at the presidency. Winning 23.3 percent of the vote in the first round of France’s presidential election on April 10, Le Pen advanced to the April 24 runoff against Macron—giving her a real shot at the presidency.

The far-right French presidential candidate celebrated Trump's victory in 2016, viewing it and Brexit as a boost to her own chances of being elected.

She repeated that sentiment in a CNN interview, saying his triumph was "a sign of hope for those who cannot bear wild globalization. "Between him and Hillary Clinton, obviously I would choose Donald Trump," she said. "The suspension of Trump's account, the purge of the digital giants against his supporters, should outrage any citizen committed to democracy," she tweeted. "It's now the world of [Vladimir] Putin, the world of Donald Trump," she told reporters after meeting with the Russian president in Moscow in March 2017. She echoed the sentiment to the BBC, calling Trump's victory "an additional stone in the building of a new world, destined to replace the old one." In February 2017, Le Pen lauded Trump's plans to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement and his "rupture with total free trade imposed on the world."

"Russia's invasion and attack on Ukraine is unacceptable," Le Pen said during the presidential debate on Wednesday.

The consequences will be cataclysmic, not only on individuals but also on enterprises." She has said France should "give Ukrainian refugees a decent welcome," and expressed solidarity for Ukrainian refugees, Politico reported. France has also paved the way for over 50,000 Ukrainian refugees to stay in the nation.

With some polls showing her almost neck-and-neck with the incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron, after making it through the first-round vote, there is a ...

A sign of Le Pen’s deep anchoring in French politics is the way that she—and her party—have become a strongly class-based political movement, to the point of recalling the politics of an earlier era. Still, for her to win, Le Pen would have to overcome one of the biggest impediments to all radical French political movements: a profound fear of social and political disorder. The tragicomedies of Brexit and the Trump presidency have done little to warm up the French for similar experiments. Moreover, while Le Pen and the National Rally have been successful in shaping the political debate, their ability to do so goes only so far. The argument that Le Pen and her party’s ideas have been mainstreamed is a powerful one. The National Rally has seven members in a National Assembly of 577, it controls none of France’s powerful regional administrations, and only 12 mayors are party members out of a total of just under 35,500. Between the 1980s, when the National Front first became electorally significant, and 2017, French politics was dominated by a center-left party and a center-right party. The National Rally has seven members in a National Assembly of 577, it controls none of France’s powerful regional administrations, and only 12 mayors are party members out of a total of just under 35,500. While the party does now have some experience of local government and municipal administration, this has not so far produced many dedicated party cadres. France’s current constitutional settlement—the Fifth Republic—was inaugurated in 1958, a time when the country was embroiled in a violent colonial war in Algeria and faced the threat of a far-right military coup. Yet the party—and its leader—have a negligible impact on French politics outside the electoral cycles. The National Front, as the party was called until 2018, was founded in 1972, which makes it one of the longest-standing far-right parties in Europe. Its first electoral breakthrough was in the early 1980s—almost 40 years ago—and, in many parts of France, it repeatedly manages to secure vote shares of between 15 and 30 percent.

The two politicians clashed during a televised debate on a number of issues, including the cost of living and France's foreign policy.

The last time they faced off in a debate was back in 2017, and it led to the unravelling of Le Pen's presidential campaign. "I will be the president of the cost of living," she said. Mr Macron argued many of Ms Le Pen's proposals were unrealistic and her idea to slash VAT to improve purchasing power was "inaccurate". She added that the French president's cost of living plans would be "inefficient" and "unfair". But the two candidates kept accusing each other of failing to respond to voters' real concerns, with Ms Le Pen saying that "in real life" her proposals would improve the situation for people much more than her opponent's policies. Mr Macron also warned that Ms Le Pen's proposed measure to ban Muslim headscarves in public spaces would create a "civil war" if it was implemented.

"You are speaking to your banker when you speak of Russia, that's the problem," Macron told Le Pen during a presidential debate on Wednesday.

"Because no French bank agreed to give me a loan." "That they will become such close allies in the future, that they will turn into a superpower, both economically, monetarily, maybe even militarily," Le Pen said. "Why was I forced to take out a loan?"

Mr Macron sought to portray his rival as an extremist who would coddle dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Macron said the measures Ms Le Pen targeted were temporary, to deal with the pandemic and the Ukraine war, and would be lifted after the crises passed. The presidential debate is a staple of French democracy, and the two jousted for two-and-a-half hours. The two candidates, who sat down behind tables two-and-a-half metres apart, sought to appeal to those voters, in particular the 22 per cent who cast ballots in the first round on 10 April for the far-left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Mr Macron, fighting a perceived aloofness and arrogance, use simpler, more emotional language to connect with voters. “You created a dependence on Vladimir Putin and Russia. When you talk to Russia, you’re talking to your banker!” “We can’t commit hara-kiri with the hope of hurting Russia financially,” she said.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned Wednesday that his far-right rival Marine Le Pen risked sparking a 'civil war' if she was elected and implemented ...

In the first round on April 10, Macron (pictured) came first out of the 12 candidates, beating second-placed Le Pen by more than 4 percentage points 'Mrs Le Pen, what you said is inaccurate,' Macron told his opponent about her proposals to slash VAT to improve purchasing power. The centrist president then rounded on Le Pen: 'You are in fact in Russia's grip. 'I don't think it will hurt Russia, but it will hurt the French people. French journalists and TV hosts Lea Salame (L) and Gilles Bouleau pose pose prior to moderating a live televised debate between French President and La Republique en Marche (LREM) party candidate for re-election Emmanuel Macron and French far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) presidential candidate Marine Le Pen on French TV channels TF1 and France 2 in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, ahead of the second round of France's presidential election Polls indicate the sitting President is ahead in the race, but the gap is much narrower than in 2017, when Macron beat Le Pen (pictured) with a landslide 66 per cent of the second round vote The TV debate is a traditional part of French election campaigns, with the two leading candidates taking part in a contest moderated by journalists. But the gap is much narrower than in 2017, when Macron beat Le Pen with a landslide 66 per cent of the second round vote. In the first round on April 10, Macron came first out of the 12 candidates, beating second-placed Le Pen by more than 4 percentage points. The TV debate is a traditional part of French election campaigns, with the two leading candidates taking part in a contest moderated by journalists. Earlier in the debate, Macron sensationally accused election rival Marine Le Pen of being 'in the grip of Russia' and using the country as 'her banker'. The 44-year-old head of state said the far-right Le Pen, 53, was unfit to replace him because she was still paying money back to Moscow during the Ukraine War French President Emmanuel Macron warned Wednesday that his far-right rival Marine Le Pen risked sparking a 'civil war' if she was elected and implemented her plans to ban the Muslim headscarf in public.

Marine Le Pen avoided the debate failures that derailed her 2017 campaign, positioning her better this year to take on Macron than five years ago.

Both candidates attempted to poke holes in each other's remarks, trading jabs that the other's information was "wrong" and Macron accused Le Pen of "mixing everything up" during a debate on France's debt. The one sanction she said she did not agree with was a ban on oil and gas because it would have "cataclysmic" consequences for French voters. However, the election is still expected to be close and Le Pen's improved debate performance better positions her with voters ahead of the vote on Sunday.

The date is May 25, 2022. President Marine Le Pen has been president of France for less than a month. Europe's leaders — her peers now — have barely ...

And so she announces, during a prime-time interview, that France is to hold, within the month, a referendum on the supremacy of EU law, permanent withdrawal from the Schengen Treaty and a move toward “a Europe of nations.” This referendum, she insists, is only a first step toward a “refounding of Europe” that will “necessarily pass by a new treaty to put the unelected European Commission back in its proper place.” In the weeks leading up to the referendum, Le Pen tours France, holding rallies at which she proclaims that “our hour of glory has arrived” invoking every historical reference available — from Joan of Arc to the liberation of Paris by the Free French Forces — to rally the country’s patriotic spirit. The credibility of the Court of Justice of the European Union will be badly damaged, encouraging other EU leaders to follow in France’s footsteps. Everyone understands that, if the French vote “yes” to the referendum, it will be the end of the EU as we know it. Despite her bullying of EU institutions and leaders, Le Pen is hopelessly disarmed against the European Central Bank, whose chief, former French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, hammers home the message that “monetary policy is not a credible answer to political instability manufactured from thin air.” Le Pen turns meetings of the European Council into theater, railing against Brussels’ ultra-liberal ethos and vowing to bring “every centime” back to the French worker. A week before her election, she told a French TV channel that her hope in regard to Russia was that the country could form an alliance with NATO as soon as the war with Ukraine is over. She tells interviewers from a consortium of EU newspapers that her vision of an “alliance of European nations” is emerging on the Ukraine question — though it’s not clear who, besides Orbàn and possibly Cyprus, is signing on. White House press secretary Jen Psaki tells the daily press briefing that “the White House does not condone individual diplomatic initiatives by NATO countries located in Europe that might undermine the common posture of the alliance” and that the U.S. was not informed in advance of Le Pen’s trip. The room erupts as Le Pen supporters crowded in the front row start a chorus of “Marine, présidente” — forgetting in their excitement that she is already president. Scholz decries Le Pen’s spirit of Alleingänge (going it alone) but adds that the French move “gives us pause,” while Orbàn says France has acted “to defend Europeans.” According to a conservative estimate by Goldman Sachs, this would take the form of an immediate 2-percent drop in the euro-dollar exchange rate and a rise in the interest rates that investors demand to hold French government bonds.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has fallen behind centrist Emmanuel Macron in the opinion polls but millions of voters are still undecided. It did not take long ...

It was intolerant and she was pushing millions of compatriots out of the public space on account of their religion, he said. Constitutional change: Another of Marine Le Pen's big policies is for citizens' referendums, which she said were rooted in the yellow-vest or gilets jaunes protests that began early in the Macron presidency. Marine Le Pen retorted that he was a "climate hypocrite". Mr Macron denied that was the case. European Union: Marine Le Pen has changed her policy from leaving the EU to seeking change from within it. And in the main, he avoided the trap of coming over as too arrogant or technocratic. Ms Le Pen said she had taken Russian money as no French bank would lend to her party. She snapped back: "I want to give the French their money back." "We need to give priority to the French in their own country," she said. And yet, the president never gave the feeling he was not on solid ground. Ms Len Pen was deemed to be more in tune with normal people (37% to Macron's 34%), but 50% of voters also found her "worrying". But this time, Marine Le Pen was ready from the start and far more composed.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen clashed Wednesday night in a TV debate that laid bare their differences, ...

"I think that the great majority of the women who wear one can't do otherwise in reality, even if they don't dare say so." When Google comes and attacks us in our market, who comes and helps us? Europe. And when these big groups don't pay their taxes in our countries, what allows us to fight back? Le Pen, who lost to Macron in the 2017 runoff, said she was "obliged to be the spokesperson of the people" and promised to be "the president of sovereignty." Le Pen, who in the 2017 election called for a French exit from the EU, has softened her stance, promising reform of the bloc and an "alliance of nations." The centrist incumbent beat a familiar tune of heavy investment in French industry and an uncompromising commitment to the European Union. Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally party, cast herself as the voice of a public struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.

French President Emmanuel Macron tore into his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen in a debate for her ties to Russia and wanting to strip Muslim women of ...

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French President Emmanuel Macron tore into his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen in a debate for her ties to Russia and wanting to strip Muslim women of ...

She said her party is repaying the loan and called the president "dishonest" for raising the issue. Because she is trailing in polls, Le Pen needed to land a knockout blow in the debate. He zeroed in on her voting record as a lawmaker and questioned her grasp of economic figures. Usually a powerful orator, Le Pen occasionally struggled for words and fluidity. Macron appeared particularly self-assured in contrast, bordering at times on arrogance — a trait that his critics have highlighted. "You are speaking to your banker when you speak of Russia, that's the problem," Macron charged. "How would you like it if a French politician took a loan from Cosa Nostra? Well, this here is the same thing." Inaudible because of the music, she had to stop and start again. But she made an inauspicious start: Having been picked to speak first, she started talking before the debate's opening jingle had finished playing. But the result is expected to be closer than five years ago and both candidates are angling for votes among electors who didn't support them in the election's first round on April 10. "You are not like me," Macron said. She said Macron's presidency had left the country deeply divided.

The French mainstream has failed to counter the far-right's pessimism about the state of the country. Americans are making the same mistake.

Because of the failure of the French mainstream to contest the pessimistic narrative of the far right, these facts are barely known in the country. On the far right, polemicists like to insinuate that immigrants from Central American nations are failing to integrate because they are somehow inferior to earlier generations of Irish and Italian newcomers. “Children of immigrants from nearly every sending country,” the economists write, “have higher rates of upward mobility than the children of the US-born.” According to one large study by European economists, for example, the children and grandchildren of immigrants are more likely to improve their living conditions than the children and grandchildren of similarly positioned “natives.” Black Americans are actually more likely than their white fellow citizens to “believe in the American dream” or to say that the country’s best days still lie ahead. In their speeches, Le Pen and Zemmour give the impression that the country they purport to love is on the brink of collapse. And they, too, give the impression that most immigrants and their descendants are perpetually stuck at the very lowest rungs of society. “More and more are coming from the third world, taking advantage of our benefits,” Le Pen once warned, turning the next presidential election into nothing short of a “choice of civilization.” France’s left rightly rejects both conspiracy theories about a “ great replacement” and attempts to blame immigrants for the concentrated poverty that does persist in some French suburbs. She has mostly stopped indulging in nostalgia for the Vichy regime, has tried to move on from the party’s anti-Semitic history, and has claimed to defend the rights of women and sexual minorities against the threat supposedly posed by intolerant immigrants. So how can a few missteps by an incumbent president, or a few adroit moves by his extremist challenger, be enough to put the far right within arm’s reach of winning the highest office in the country? But the outcome of the runoff was a foregone conclusion.

PARIS — French voters go to the polls on Sunday for France's presidential election runoff between incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader ...

PARIS — French voters go to the polls on Sunday for France’s presidential election runoff between incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Verdict of public and pundits is that the current president was more convincing than his far-right rival.

Judging by the debate, she did not dispel the doubts.” Le Figaro concluded the debate would not have changed voters’ intentions. Le Monde concluded the debate was once again “a failure” for Le Pen. “Did she give the impression she is ready to govern?” asked Le Parisien in an editorial. Clément Beaune, the Europe minister, accused Le Pen of seeking to organise a Frexit by stealth. The exchange was a rematch of 2017’s TV debate, during which the far-right leader became aggressive. Was Marine Le Pen dominated or passive? About 15.6 million people watched the debate, fewer than in 2017 when 16.6 million viewers tuned in.

President Emmanuel Macron and far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Thursday prepared for a final rush of campaigning before France's presidential election after ...

The left-leading Liberation said Le Pen was "vague on numerous subjects" and Macron "arrogant". Both candidates have their eyes on voters who backed third-placed hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round. "It's not Gerard Majax (on TV) this evening," retorted Macron, referring to a well-known French television conjurer. "When you speak to Russia you are speaking to your banker." I say this sincerely." On Thursday, Macron was due to meet voters in the north of Paris and Le Pen to hold a rally in the northern city of Arras.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa slammed French presidential candidate Marine ...

“The second round of the French presidential election is not, for us, an election like the others,” Scholz,Sánchez and Costa wrote. “They all equally know little about the real lives of French people. It also follows Wednesday’s highly anticipated debate between the two candidates, in which the incumbent came off as more convincing to voters, according to a snap poll published Thursday.

The weaknesses of far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen were on full display on Wednesday in her nearly three-hour debate with French President ...

But Macron used the issue against her at Wednesday’s debate, declaring she was ushering in a “civil war.” “France, the home of the Enlightenment and universalism, will become the first country in the world to ban religious symbols in public spaces. This, too, might not be of high concern to most French voters, but Le Pen’s effort to backpedal suggests she thinks the issue might hurt her. Le Pen and her supporters have tried to downplay the issue in recent days. And he certainly will never be able to get past his praise for Putin — whom he called “savvy” and a “genius” — during the opening days of Russia’s brutal attack against Ukraine. Among the many problems with such an edict is that it would ban all such religious garb in public. Macron was ferocious on the issue, attacking Le Pen for attempting to soften her pro-Russian tendencies.

Marine Le Pen has worked for years at polishing the rough edges of the far-right National Rally, the party her rabble-rousing father Jean-Marie founded a ...

If she wins the presidency on her third try – as no lesser lights than François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac have in the past – Le Pen would become the first woman ever elected president in France. She would also bring the far right to power in the country for the first time in the modern political era. Determined to have another go at the Élysée Palace, Le Pen threw her hat in the ring for a third time in 2022, keen to better her 2017 performance. In 2011, at a National Front party congress in Tours, Jean-Marie Le Pen passed the torch to his daughter after she won a leadership vote handily. Marine Le Pen permanently excluded him from the party in 2015. In the north of France, the once-proud rust belt sapped of its industry and jobs, Le Pen found fertile terrain to sow her ideas. In 1998, she won election as a regional councillor in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais area of northern France. That same year, Le Pen's private life was a flurry of activity, too; she gave birth to her first child followed by a set of twins less than 11 months later. For the young Le Pen, the limelight was harsh: Her parents' messy divorce in the headlines, erotic photos of her mother in Playboy, the insults that rained down when a 15-year-old Marine hit the campaign trail with her father ahead of municipal elections in 1983. Le Pen père thumbed his nose at critics on all fronts – not least those who questioned his daughter's role in the party, rankled by the junior Le Pen's "modernist" stances on subjects like abortion and religion. The new and improved Le Pen insists that Islam is "compatible with the French Republic". And the 2022 version of her National Rally – rebranded in 2018 to underscore the makeover – no longer pledges to pull France out of the euro currency or even the European Union. Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen was born on August 5, 1968, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, west of Paris. Nicknamed Marine, Jean-Marie Le Pen's youngest child – the third of three girls after Marie-Caroline and Yann – was steeped in politics from infancy. Far from the potshots she was happy to fire off on the presidential campaign trail back in 2012, the "mother of cats" – as she now likes to describe herself – is given to posing with her kitties for the media and for her 2.6 million Twitter followers. Her results speak for themselves: in the first round on April 10, Le Pen added two points to her 2017 score, tallying 23.15 percent of the vote this time to advance to another final.

Shortly after Biden was declared winner of the 2020 election, the French far-right presidential candidate said she "absolutely" did not recognize the ...

After Biden called Putin a "war criminal" last month, Le Pen said she did not agree with his use of the term. But from the moment the remedies are exhausted, we must respect this democratic process, recognize our defeat and the victory of Joe Biden." Once again, I think that the game is not over and that when there are appeals, justice must be able to decide before deciding what comes out of the ballot box."

Ever since its publication in 1954, historian René Remond's classic work Les Droites en France has framed and, at times, enflamed how French historians ...

In 1962, this did not stop then-French President Charles de Gaulle, who famously used this article to change the constitution to allow the direct election of the president by popular suffrage. No less important, Le Pen knows that even if there was a majority in the National Assembly to support her proposal, the Senate, which is not facing elections, would prevent it from going any further. If each of the two legislative chambers—the National Assembly and the Senate—pass the proposed change, they must then meet in a joint session, where the bill requires a three-fifths majority to pass. After becoming president, Le Pen vowed that she would “organize a referendum on the essential questions of the control of immigration, the protection of the French identity, and the primacy of national rights.” In the referendum, the French would vote up or down on “la priorité nationale”: a proposal blocking noncitizens living in France from seeking employment, housing, health care, and social benefits. The oddest offspring, however, was the romantic Bonapartists, dedicated to a ruler who, by channeling the will of the people, guaranteed their equality, glorified their fraternity, and garroted their liberty. Because Le Pen also wants to ditch the principle of jus soli, which confers citizenship of those born on French soil, the number of noncitizens would increase dramatically. The oddest offspring, however, was the romantic Bonapartists, dedicated to a ruler who, by channeling the will of the people, guaranteed their equality, glorified their fraternity, and garroted their liberty. In this campaign, Le Pen has emphasized the issue of pouvoir d’achat (“purchasing power”) over her more traditional focus on immigration. With the French Revolution, not only was the political left born but so too was the right. A growing number of scholars have, of late, insisted that Remond’s analysis is obsolete, superseded by events over the past few decades. With the French Revolution, not only was the political left born but so too was the right. A growing number of scholars have, of late, insisted that Remond’s analysis is obsolete, superseded by events over the past few decades.

Fascist, dirty liberal, racist, elitist - the violent dislike in this French election is startling.

Macron is disparagingly referred to as "Jupiter" or "president of the rich" by his detractors. We then were left to hang around irritably, until they suddenly announced the name of the village Marine Le Pen would imminently appear in for a campaign event. Not only for France but the whole of Europe. Also damaging close economic partner the UK, he said. France has the EU's only significant military force. But there is a logic to it. Preventing the most odious candidate from taking office. This is her third attempt at the presidency, and she is the softest public version of herself yet. "The current government has been lead by the privileged minority for the privileged minority. "I am running for president to change that. Which makes Sunday's vote all the more fascinating. That's the reality." "I'm not radical, sorry!"

President Emmanuel Macron won in Semur-en-Auxois in the first round of voting this month, but Ms. Le Pen took the larger Burgundy Franche-Comté region, with 27 ...

In his view, the government should “worry about mobility, worry about training, delivering a high-quality education,” so that workers are ready for today’s economy, not yesterday’s. Otherwise Ms. Le Pen is likely to maintain her grip on many of France’s rural and deindustrialized areas, while Mr. Macron will continue to win more-prosperous urban areas. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. This election has further scrambled the traditional divide between left and right in France. Ms. Le Pen has managed to widen her consensus by combining far-right positions on immigration with a left-leaning defense of public spending and social welfare. Her message resonates, even with younger voters like Ms. Bernard — she has promised to eliminate income tax for people under 30 — and her once extreme positions appear less so now that the center right has also adopted much of the same rhetoric, especially on national-identity issues. Mr. Macron won the election in 2017 telling France it needed to change, pushing through labor reform that makes it easier for businesses to hire and fire. In fact, 15 years after her father’s last run for president, Ms. Le Pen has not significantly diverged from his views on immigration even though she renamed the party, in what has been seen as an attempt distance herself from him and broaden the base. Her father” — Jean-Marie Le Pen, a former presidential candidate and the longtime leader of the far-right National Front party — “was completely racist. In the 2017 election that brought Mr. Macron into office, Balot, a dot on the map amid flat green farmland and fields of canary-yellow rapeseed, about 80 percent of voters supported Ms. Le Pen. As I drove around rural Burgundy after the first round of voting this month, I came away with a strong sense that while Mr. Macron may well defeat her in the second round this Sunday, in many ways, Ms. Len Pen has already won. That smirk is a problem for Mr. Macron. He has a tendency to talk down to people — to say “let me explain to you,” rather than listen. President Emmanuel Macron won in Semur-en-Auxois in the first round of voting this month, but Ms. Le Pen took the larger Burgundy Franche-Comté region, with 27 percent of the vote over Mr. Macron’s 26 percent. Of all the candidates, she said, “I think she’s the most logical.”