Why Le Pen could be about to take over France

A look at the currents pushing Marine Le Pen's National Rally forward

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Photo: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg News

Marine Le Pen and her National Rally movement have already topped at the polls at the European elections this year. And now they also look set to win France’s snap legislative elections, with the first round held this weekend.

That’s according to the latest polls, which all put Le Pen’s National Rally in the top spot, comfortably ahead of the left-wing alliance (the New People’s Front), which is in second place, and Macron’s liberal centrist coalition, which is in third.

It represents the latest remarkable achievement for Marine Le Pen and her movement, which over the last quarter-century has consistently watched its support climb.

From 4% in the first round of the legislative elections in 2007, to nearly 14% in 2012, 13% in 2017, and then up again to nearly 19% in 2002, Le Pen’s national populist party has consistently been consolidating and expanding its support.

So much so that, today, in the final polls, Le Pen and her movement are forecast to attract some 36% of the vote —more than one in three voters.

And at the heart of this populist revolt is not the ageing Le Pen but Jordan Bardella —her debonair, charismatic and articulate 28-year-old protégé who has declared himself ready to become the next prime minister of France —something he will achieve if Le Pen, Bardella, and their movement win an outright majority of 289 seats.

Which raises the obvious question. How did a movement that’s long been branded ‘far right’, ‘racist’, and compared to historic fascism rise to win support from more than one-third of French voters?

Analysts on the left will tell you this is simply to do with the dire state of the economy and a cost-of-living crisis that’s undermining hardworking, French people.

But this is misleading.

The surge of popularity for Le Pen’s National Rally, and before it the National Front, has been decades in the making and continued irrespective of economic conditions.

Far more important than the economy is Le Pen’s hard-line policies on the key issues of immigration and violent crime —with the connection between the two now officially recognised in government statistics.

Foreigners make up 8% of the French population but account for 24% of prison inmates. They committed 77% of rapes in Paris, 54% of street crimes in Nice and 40% of vehicle thefts, and 38% of burglaries and 31% of muggings across France.

And in recent months, the stark reality of mass immigration, the glaring lack of social integration, and, to be blunt, what happens when Western nations import people who hate who we are has been further highlighted by a series of shocking atrocities.

Like the stabbing of babies in Annecy by a Syrian asylum-seeker. Like a vicious attack against a 76-year old lady in Bordeaux and her 7-year old grand-daughter that was perpetrated by a homeless man of African descent with 15 previous convictions (warning: graphic content). And like the beating and rape of a 12-year old Jewish girl by 3 boys aged 12 to 13 in an attack inspired by the Hamas pogrom of October 7th.

Speaking directly to the French people’s intensifying concerns about what many of them now see as a ‘civilisational moment’, Le Pen describes this phenomenon as the ‘ensauvagement’ (savagification) of French society.

And there’s no doubt many people agree with her. Recent surveys …