But today, eight months after the French presidential election, the FN seems flummoxed by Emmanuel Macron, the country’s centrist president, who, with his hefty budget cuts and far-reaching welfare reforms, would seem to be the party’s ideal adversary. Instead, the Front’s deputies in the Assembly largely abstained from debates on pro-business labor reform and have kept similarly quiet on tax cuts that benefit the ultra-rich. When voters are asked to identify who they consider to be the primary “opposition” to the government, most pick the left-wing populist La France Insoumise over the FN. Tellingly, it was the fiery Jean-Luc Mélenchon, La France Insoumise’s leader, and not Le Pen, who coined “president of the rich,” a popular epithet for Macron. [...]
Perhaps nothing better exemplifies the FN’s identity crisis than the departure of Florian Philippot, the party’s former vice president and national spokesperson. He had embodied the FN’s “de-demonization” strategy—less racism and xenophobia, more education, healthcare and progressive economics. A graduate of the prestigious École Nationale d’Administration, he joined the FN in 2011, working with Le Pen to refine its critiques of globalization and reframe French politics as a clash between “globalists” and “patriots.” Electoral success followed, thanks largely to low-income voters, many of them from former bastions of the left. In the first round of the 2017 presidential election, Le Pen won more support from working-class voters than any other candidate, according to an Ipsos poll. [...]
On social issues, too, Chenu said the party must evolve: While Le Pen’s 2017 platform called for the repeal of same-sex marriage, “we won’t say we’re against marriage next time,” Chenu said, referring to same-sex marriage. (Shortly after I spoke with Jean Messiha, he landed in hot water: In reference to the party’s former vice president, who is gay, Messiha told Le Monde that “you don’t work with Philippot if you’re not gay.”) “We need to appear like a party that wants to govern France and not just [as] a protest party,” Chenu said. [...]
It’s difficult to see anything changing until another FN politician rises to challenge Le Pen. To some degree, the party still operates as something of a personality cult. (At the national party headquarters, a non-descript building in a residential neighborhood in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, guests are greeted by intense security checks from armed guards sporting blue patches that read “Marine.”) In a recent opinion poll, she yet again proved herself to be the most disliked politician in France. If the nation isn’t exactly smitten with Emmanuel Macron, it continues to despise Marine Le Pen.
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