LONDON // The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen says Donald Trump’s election triumph has given a significant boost to her campaign to achieve what Hillary Clinton could not and become her country’s first woman president.
The Front National leader, who is anti-European Union, anti-immigration and widely seen as anti-Islam, was one of the first politicians around the world to send her congratulations following Mr Trump’s victory.
“It is not the end of the world,” she declared as the outcome of the US election became known, “but the end of a world.”
On Sunday, Ms Le Pen told the BBC's flagship political programme, The Andrew Marr Show, that Mr Trump "made possible what has previously been presented as impossible".
The BBC was sharply criticised, especially by those on the left, for interviewing a woman regarded by many of her opponents as a neo-fascist on Remembrance Sunday, which commemorates – among others – soldiers killed fighting Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It came after the state-owned France 2 television channel stirred controversy last Wednesday by giving Ms Le Pen generous airtime in its peak-time news bulletin on Mr Trump’s victory.
Ms Le Pen, 48, is already a favourite to reach the decisive second round of the French presidential election next May.
If she were to win the presidency Ms Le Pen has pledged to hold a referendum on France’s membership of the EU. Leaders of the bloc fear the union could collapse if she is able to persuade the French people to vote to leave like the British.
A number of other European far-right leaders are also buoyed by Mr Trump’s win. These include Geert Wilders, whose Freedom Party hopes to win the Netherlands general election next year, and Austria’s Norbert Hofer, a strong contender in his country’s rerun of presidential elections next month.
Europe’s loose-knit band of populist right-wing leaders has also taken heart from Mr Trump’s remarkable decision to choose Nigel Farage – who led the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) in its pro-Brexit campaign – as the first British politician he has met following his win.
Although Mr Farage has sought to distance himself from the Front National, Ms Le Pen said at the weekend that there was not a “hair’s breadth” between her party and Ukip on key issues.
The Front National, launched in 1972 by Ms Le Pen’s ultranationalist father, Jean-Marie, is currently ahead in the opinion polls as France’s most popular political party.
Although some members remain attracted to the Front National’s image as a racist movement, Ms Le Pen has devoted several years to a campaign of “de-demonisation”, as she terms it.
Last year Ms Le Pen orchestrated her father’s expulsion from the party after he repeated a claim that the Nazi gas chambers were a mere detail of the Second World War. Mr Le Pen, who has a long record of insulting both Arabs and Jews, had also defended the collaborationist French wartime leader Marshal Philippe Petain, who was convicted as a traitor after Germany’s defeat.
In her interview with the BBC, Ms Le Pen rejected as “insulting” any suggestion that her party is racist, stressing her disapproval of her father’s comments and insisting that French Muslims were welcome provided they accepted the French constitution, law and values.
Yet the Front National leader has long campaigned against what she calls the “Islamicisation” of France and said earlier this year that the problem was not Islam but its “visibility”.
The party has also exploited deep disaffection with French mainstream politicians in much the way Mr Trump did in the United States.
In the 2002 French presidential election, Ms Le Pen’s father reached the second round only to be crushed by the centre-right Jacques Chirac when socialist voters put aside traditional rivalries to keep him out. Mr Chirac took 82 per cent of the vote in the run-off.
With the Front National’s current popularity levels, however, the 2017 election is certain to be much more closely fought.
France’s best hope of halting Ms Le Pen may be that people on the left again adopt tactical voting, but this may not be as straightforward as in 2002.
The Socialist Party is in disarray, with the president, Francois Hollande, suffering historically low public approval ratings, and no other party figure seeming able to rally the French public.
Current favourites for the centre-right party The Republicans’ nomination – which will be decided in primaries later this month – are Alain Juppe, a former prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, who served as president from 2007 to 2012.
Since the exclusion of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Front National leaders have expressed indignation at the “far right” label, even though many supporters readily use the term.
Pierre Dumazeau, a senior political writer with Valeurs Actuels, a popular French magazine that appeals to readers from the centre-right to the far right, insists that the party has changed significantly in recent years.
He told The National that Ms Le Pen's rise to the leadership and her willingness to expel her father are "signs that symbolise the new Front National", adding that "her right-hand man, Florian Philippot, even came from a left-wing party".
“The fact that FN (Front National) is the leading political party in France shows the real anger of French people,” he said.
Asked in her BBC interview whether events in the US made it more likely that she would win next year, Ms Le Pen, said: “It makes possible what was previously presented as impossible. So it’s a real victory of the people against the elite.”
Mr Trump’s victory was a “global revolution”, she said, another step in “the building of a new world, destined to replace the old one”.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
