Seeking renewal and a brand change after last year’s bruising election defeats, France’s National Front on Saturday opened its party conference where former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon was due to make a key address.
Its leader Marine Le Pen, who will wind up the gathering in the northern party stronghold of Lille on Sunday, wants to revive a party battered by the electoral failures, not least by ditching the tainted FN brand, seen as a key hurdle to winning power, in favour of an as yet unannounced new name. Party faithful were eagerly awaiting the appearance of controversial ex-White House advisor Bannon, who has repeatedly expressed support for Europe’s far-right movements.
Bannon, once a powerful figure in the Trump administration who used to head Breitbart News, was expected to encourage delegates “that victory is possible, and how to obtain it,” FN spokesman Sebastien Chenu said ahead of his address. His visit raised eyebrows in the government of French President Emmanuel Macron.
“The king of fake news and of white supremacists at an FN summit… why am I not surprised? Change of name but not of the political line,” said the head of Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move party, Christophe Castaner.
Bannon’s arrival was also questioned by former party head Jean-Marie Le Pen, from whom Marine took over the leadership in 2011.
Speaking in Paris, he dubbed the American’s visit “paradoxical” and “not exactly the definition of ‘de-demonisation'” which daughter Marine has sought to give the party.
Marine Le Pen is running unopposed for a third term and her address Sunday will see her trying to turn a page on the anti-Semitic, openly racist party of her former paratrooper father.
“Without a name change we will not be able to forge alliances. And without alliances we will never be able to take power,” she said last month.
The party is set to strip 89-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen of his role as honorary president, severing his last formal link to the movement he led for nearly four decades.
Nine months after Marine was defeated by Macron for president in a bruising battle between nationalists and globalists, the FN is struggling to rebound.
She goes into the conference weakened by her poor performance in a final TV debate against Macron, which raised questions about her fitness to lead one of the world’s biggest economies.
Since the presidential campaign and June general election in which the FN bagged only eight seats, the party and its leader have appeared deflated.
But she insisted Friday that “the National Front has reached adulthood… it has passed from being a party of protest in its youth and then a party of opposition to a party of government”.
This week Le Pen appeared heartened by the strong gains made by the allied anti-immigrant League party in Italy’s election. Even so, her appetite for battle appears dented.
The 49-year-old mother of three told French radio recently she would gladly step aside before the 2022 presidential election if another candidate was “better placed to unite people and help our ideas triumph”.
All eyes instantly turned to her glamorous niece, 28-year-old former MP Marion Marechal-Le Pen.
Marechal-Le Pen, the darling of the FN old guard, withdrew from politics last year but made a high-profile appearance last month at a conservative jamboree in the US, fuelling speculation about a comeback.
The soap opera squabbles of the Le Pen dynasty have kept French media in thrall. Jean-Marie Le Pen said that in losing heavily to Macron his daughter had “not been equal to the challenge” — a sentiment echoed by many FN members. Others woes have stacked up since.
Marine has been charged over her party’s alleged misuse of EU expenses, and for tweeting gruesome images of Islamic State atrocities.
She also fell out with her former right-hand man Florian Philippot, who went on to form the rival Patriots party.
One of the FN’s two senators Claudine Kauffmann resigned, denouncing “nepotism” in the party in a letter to Le Pen made public Friday. She had earlier been suspended for comparing migrants to “vermin”.
But party members credit Marine Le Pen with massively expanding the party’s support, doubling its score from 5.5 million votes in the 2002 presidential election to 10.6 million, or almost 34 percent, in 2017.
Le Pen is hoping for a rematch with Macron in next year’s European elections, by forming alliances with other eurosceptic parties around the bloc.
At home, she is banking on divisions between pro-Macron centrists and right wingers tearing his party apart, making the FN France’s biggest party of the right. (With AFP)
