At Marine Le Pen’s modest campaign headquarters in one of the most upmarket streets of Paris – Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré – something is missing, and it’s not just the symbolic Joan of Arc statue or giant papier-mache cockerel that grace the Front National’s permanent offices a few miles away.
Here, not far from the Élysée Palace where Le Pen hopes to reside in four months’ time, posters hanging in the interview room feature the campaign slogan Au nom du peuple (in the name of the people), and the words MARINE Présidente, accompanied by a blue, thorn-free rose. There is no mention of the FN nor, indeed, any sign of the Le Pen name. Gone, too, is the FN’s red-white-and-blue flame logo.
Today, Marine is officially launching her presidential campaign. She arrives wearing a jacket that perfectly matches the posters and the chair set out for her next to the obligatory Tricolour, which blends into the grey-blue walls. It is all perfectly co-ordinated and reassuring. Le Pen smiles and wishes everyone a happy new year.
This is far-right lite, the “soft” image of a famously tough woman and champion of a “forgotten France” who – according to “private” photographs released last year – is also kind to kittens.
It is six years since Marine took over the FN and set about making it, and herself, electable. In that time, she has transformed its status from toxic fringe movement to a party that is part of the political mainstream. Today, four months before a presidential election, victory for Le Pen remains unlikely, but no longer impossible.
Le Pen père, however, has no place in this metamorphosed and rebranded party. Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter no longer speak after she threw him out for failing to sign up to the detoxification programme. While he continues to bang on about the Holocaust being a small “detail” of history, Marine has moved on; her targets are immigration, the EU and Islamic fundamentalism.
Jérôme Fourquet, a director of opinion pollster Ifop, says this rebranding goes beyond the usual attempt by a French presidential candidate to personalise their campaign.
“Everyone in France knows the FN logo and the Le Pen name and these still make a lot of people afraid,” he said. “By erasing the logo and the name, and presenting the candidate by her first name, they are trying to create a closeness and suggest a product that is less hard, less worrying, less frightening.”
Last September, the FN announced that its annual conference, traditionally a “summer university”, would be called a “summer event”, with posters depicting a seaside sunset. “It was in very soft and pastel colours, more like an advertisement for a holiday on the Côte d’Azur than for a political event,” said Fourquet.
Marine Le Pen, 48, set about “de-demonising” the FN in 2011 after taking control of the party her father founded in the 1970s. Le Pen senior, 88, had caused a political earthquake in 2002 by winning through to the second round of the presidential election but, until relatively recently, the Le Pens have been viewed as unelectable to the ultimate office.
Uli Wiesendanger, founder of the international, Paris-based TBWA advertising agency, said Le Pen had quickly realised she had to “water down” the racist, Nazi, homophobic image of the party exemplified by her father if she wanted serious power. “What she is doing is really not that creative, and I don’t imagine a marketing specialist has masterminded it,” Wiesendanger said.
“I expect she thought it up herself, after she realised that the name was not appealing to people. But if the party she represents is ashamed of its name, that’s a very interesting observation.
“She is far from stupid and she speaks very well, better than any other politician in the country, but I wouldn’t represent her.”
It is not clear who, if anyone, is representing Le Pen. Her 2012 presidential campaign was handled by a little-known agency, Riwal, run by long-time friend Frédéric Chatillon, a former member of the shadowy far-right student organisation Group Union Défense (GUD). In 2015, a judge ordered Chatillon, whose name appeared in the Panama Papers (the leak that uncovered a global operation of secretive offshore companies), and Riwal not to work “in a direct or indirect manner” with the FN as part of an investigation into campaign funding.
Last week, outside Le Pen’s campaign HQ, L’Escale (the stopover), an election poster had been vandalised. Underneath the scratches, Le Pen could be seen against a bucolic backdrop gazing dreamily into the far-right future, above the slogan: La France Apaisée (a soothed France). Again, no mention of the FN.
Today, French pollsters are wary of predicting the outcome of the presidential election, but a second-round run-off between the centre-right candidate François Fillon and either Le Pen, or the independent former Socialist minister Emmanuel Macron, is seen as the most likely scenario. The Socialist and Ecology parties will select their candidate at the end of the month from a large cast of left-wing candidates, including former prime minister Manuel Valls.
Inside L’Escale, addressing members of the Anglo-American Press Association, Le Pen was confident as she railed against multiple targets: the “blackmail, threats, intimidation … and diktats” of EU technocrats; the euro that is “a knife stuck in a country’s ribs”; the enforced “submission” of France to the will of Brussels.
Out of the blue, Le Pen attacked German chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union’s domination of the continent’s politics, using the term à la schlague, a phrase that means “by beating” and is most often associated with Nazi concentration camp brutality. This is one reason why many concur with Fourquet and view Marine’s makeover with scepticism.
“Personally, I’m not convinced that it works,” Fourquet said. “It’s like Coca-Cola deciding its trademark will no longer be red, but green. It’s a complicated thing, changing the way the public see these things – and I don’t think people will be fooled. The Le Pen name is very well known. She may have changed the packaging to something nicer, but the policies inside remain as hard as they’ve always been.”
THE CONTENDERS
Emmanuel Macron The former Socialist economy minister, 39, is now standing as an independent.
Manuel Valls Former prime minister, 54, who is favourite to win the left primaries.
François Fillon The former centre-right prime minister, 62, who is standing for Les Républicains.
Outsiders Former ministers Vincent Peillon, 56, Arnaud Montebourg, 54, and Benoît Hamon, 49; and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 65, from the far left.
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