How strong is Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French extreme right who, aiming to wrest a Emmanuel Macron is the chair of President of the Republic keeping all of Europe in suspense? More than eight million people voted for it, precisely 8.133.828, equal to 23,1% of the total votes, against the 9 million (9.783.058) of French who chose Macron. But his "army" is leaking from all sides.
Marine le Pen, born Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen, 54 this August, married twice, three children, a lawyer before dedicating herself totally to politics, just when the most coveted and dreamed of chair seems one step away from being conquered, must come to terms with a huge lack of paintings to use "after" the victory.
Let's start with his party: Reassembly National it is not "a political family", but the property of a "political family", as claimed by Jean-Michel Salvator, an editorialist for the newspaper Le Parisien who counted seven groups in the clan: the father (Jean Marie), the candidate daughter (Marine), the militant daughters (Yann and Marie Caroline), the councilor brother-in-law (Philippe Olivier), the niece's partner (Jordan Bardella), the candidate's former partner (Louis Aliot), the rebellious niece (Marion Maréchal). Everyone cares about the party, everyone lives from the party.
And its national directorate also leaves something to be desired: fourteen members, of which none with government experience. It would be strange, but not too strange, if outside the clan there were a line of executives and leaders ready to commit themselves and govern; instead, at least on stage, only the desert is seen. And i runners? Where are the technicians who from time to time the parties pull out of their hats when necessary? Dark again.
The experts who assist Marine Le Pen in drawing up the programs are not only unknown, but also anonymous, hidden behind the name of a think tank,“Horace”, of which we only know that it is a group made up of about fifty senior officials, business executives and representatives of liberal professions who have been working for her since 2016. The creator, André Rougé, now the party's European deputy, even jokes about the anonymity: “When we meet we put on the hood”.
With whom would the Government be formed?
This is why the question that French commentators have been asking themselves in recent hours is not useless: who would form the government? if Marine Le Pen really wins the election? The answer of the candidate has so far always been the same: "First I win, then I distribute the seats". And a little bragging about her: "However, I have names to make three governments, not just one", as she claimed in an interview with Le Figaro. But no one really believes it because in France the composition of the "after" government is almost always an open secret. It is always Jaen-Michel Salvator who remembers it: in 1988 Mitterrand let it be known that he wanted Rocard; in 1995 Chirac chose Alain Juppé; Sarkozy in 2007 pointed to François Fillon; Hollande in 2012 bet on Jean-Marc-Ayrault. And to get to Macron, in 2017 the prime minister's name was not known, but that of his main ministers was.
In the challenge of at least five years ago the name of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan was circulated, the deputy of "Debout la France", "France standing", another right-wing and sovereignist movement, who in the first round of these elections took the 2,1%: he would have been Marine Le Pen's prime minister if she had won the presidential elections. This time the only thing the voters have been able to know is that his Prime Minister he will be “a politician who will have to manage a team that will respect the coherence of the project”. Really too little. In short, one is more inclined to think that around her there is a professional vacuum and ideal that even prevents it from revealing the sketches of who would take on the task of realizing its "adventurous" program, as it is considered by the main observers.
The fact is that the task is not easy for the "blonde lady", as those French who don't even want to pronounce her name call her: many of her best-prepared followers have left the ship to join the most extremist Eric Zemmour, whose political project, supported by Vincent Bolloré, the big boss of Vivendi, which the Italians know well being a shareholder of Tim, gained 8%.
Why doesn't he embark then? Because the votes of the former Figaro polemicist are one thing, which Marine obviously does not refuse, another is to say out loud that in his government there will also be the racist, xenophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-European and pro-Putinian. If she did so, her mask of "woman of state" would come off, as she presented herself to the voters this time, conservative as you like, but all in all respectable and capable of being in the good salons of the bourgeoisie.
Marine Le Pen lives the same isolation in Europe. If he were to become president of the French Republic, with whom would he implement that part of the program which outlines a "European alliance of free and equal nation-states" which will have to "progressively replace the European Union"? At the table of the 27 EU members, with the exception of Poland and Hungary, there is no Eurosceptic far-right government. The Lega in Italy, the FPO in Austria and the AfD in Germany can be added to the Polish PIS and the Hungarian Fidesz, but – the commentators point out – beyond Euroscepticism and aversion to immigrants, all these parties they share an ideological coherence like the Greens or the Social Democrats. All the more so Russia's war on Ukraine has shuffled the cards more, given that Poland is anti-Putin without hesitation, while Le Pen's party has more than close relations with the Kremlin, starting with the 9 million euro debt that his party contracted in 2014 with a Russian Bank and which has yet to return.
Translated in presidential sauce it means that perhaps the battle for the Confederation of Nation-States could be put aside, but if Marine wins the elections he will certainly proceed on the road to a Frexit who would not "say his name," as national analysts fear. Since his program provides for the primacy of French law over European law and therefore he could choose what he intends to respect and what he prefers to ignore. That is to say: goodbye to migration policy, goodbye to the right of asylum, goodbye to free trade treaties and the free movement of goods and people within the single market. And again the end of the common defense policy. Because obviously Marine Le Pen's program includes theexit from NATO and a France set up autonomously among the great blocs; which means recognizing only one of the two in Europe, Russia.
All this is scary because “the blonde lady” unlike in 2017, if she is unlikely to win, no less his victory is not impossible. Everything is in the hands of the real balance of these elections, the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon. How will its more than 7 million votes (7.712.520, equal to 22%) be divided? According to the latest polls, there is a third of those who voted for him who will prefer abstention because "never" Macron; or because, according to the slogans of far-left students protesting in universities, "neither him nor her".
Another third of the "melanchonists” will vote for the outgoing president also following the latest indications from Mélenchon who is insisting on clarifying that Le Pen and Macron “are not equivalent”. But the last third could even vote for Marine: not only for a question of similarity of ideals (especially in foreign policy), but because "everyone except Macron". It has already happened in history. It wouldn't be the first time that "true" evil cannot be distinguished on the left.