How Marine Le Pen is preparing for power
The party has its eyes not on protest but on the presidency
It is an annual ritual in France for politicians to make a new year’s address. Time was that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the hard-right National Rally (RN, formerly the National Front), did so from the back room of a boxy building in Nanterre, on the drab outskirts of Paris. In those days the party she took over in 2011 from her father, Jean-Marie, was more about low-budget protest and fringe provocation than taking power.
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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The long game”
Europe March 2nd 2024
- How Marine Le Pen is preparing for power
- France and Germany are at loggerheads over military aid to Ukraine
- Europe hopes barbed wire will keep migrants out. It won’t
- Azerbaijan is racing to rebuild in recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh
- Kharkiv is struggling under Russian rocket attacks
- Is Europe’s stubby skyline a sign of low ambition?
From the March 2nd 2024 edition
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Marine Le Pen spooks the bond markets
She threatens to bring down the French government, but also faces a possible ban from politics
The maths of Europe’s military black hole
It needs to spend to defend, but voters may balk
Ukraine’s warriors brace for a Kremlin surge in the south
Vladimir Putin’s war machine is pushing harder and crushing Ukrainian morale
Vladimir Putin fires a new missile to amplify his nuclear threats
The attack on Ukraine is part of a new era of missile warfare
A rise in antisemitism puts Europe’s liberal values to the test
The return of Europe’s oldest scourge
Once dominant, Germany is now desperate
As an election looms its business model is breaking down