Although the anti-immigration policies are intact, with promises to prioritise homes, jobs and benefits for French nationals, gone is the overt racism and antisemitism of her father, who died last year.
Marine Le Pen has been taken to court herself but ultimately she was acquitted in 2015 of inciting racial hatred for comparing the sight of Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.
Her expulsion of Jean-Marie Le Pen from the National Front in August 2015 marked the culmination of a family feud, and at one point he suggested “Marine Le Pen may want me dead”. After his death, she said she would “never forgive myself for this decision, because I know it caused him immense pain”.
In 2018, a year after she came second to Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election, she rebranded the party entirely.
The purge did not end there. When an old family friend, Steeve Briois, who is still mayor of the National Rally northern stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont, was ousted from the party’s executive, he complained of a shift towards “immigration and identity” at the expense of everyday social issues.
With less than a year before the next presidential vote, that rebranding appears complete.
Never before have the opinion polls given her such hope of electoral victory, and she is buoyed by the support of Bardella, the young lieutenant she wants as prime minister.
A less risky course may have been to pass the baton to him, as she and her party will now have to wait several months for the Court of Cassation to rule on her case.
Marine Le Pen was never likely to accept a guilty verdict, especially one that removed a five-year bar on running for public office and left the door open for a fourth candidacy.
Her retirement from politics is now out of the question.
Source:
www.bbc.co.uk