How Le Pen’s far right blew it

PARIS  — Less than a week ago, the far-right party of Marine Le Pen was poised to take power in France for the first time in the modern republic’s history. 

On Sunday night, Le Pen gathered with supporters of her National Rally (RN) at a glitzy reception near Paris’ Floral Park, in the East of the capital. The Champagne flowed as they waited to toast the results in the final round of voting in the parliamentary election.

Then, her world started to fall apart.

When the results came in, the RN suffered a stunning reversal, finishing in third place behind both the left-wing alliance and even the coalition headed by unpopular President Emmanuel Macron.

The RN won’t come to power, its leader Jordan Bardella won’t be prime minister and the party might not even end up as the main opposition in parliament.

To cap it all, on Tuesday, she was hit by a corruption investigation over allegations relating to her presidential campaign two years ago.

The National Rally suffered a stunning reversal. | Hans Lucas/Getty Images

So what went wrong for the face of Europe’s far right?

Bardella’s mistakes 

Speaking in the aftermath of the defeat, 28-year-old Bardella spent a whole day apologizing for the first big defeat of his political career. “We always make mistakes, I made mistakes, and I take my share of responsibility for the results,” he said on French television Monday.

Smelling blood, some old-timers of the party have turned against the new leadership under Bardella. Bruno Bilde, a close ally of Le Pen who fell out with the younger man, slammed the RN’s campaign management. The party “needs to do some soul-searching,” Bilde, an RN parliamentarian, said.

He described “structural causes” which hindered the far right’s second-round campaign. Louis Aliot, the mayor of Perpignan who failed against Bardella in the 2022 leadership race, slammed the RN’s selection process. 

In 2017, after Le Pen’s underwhelming performance in the presidential election runoff and a botched debate against Macron, the RN’s then-second-in-command Florian Philippot was pushed to the side, eventually leading him to leave the party. 

This time again, heads are starting to roll.

On Monday evening, the recently elected MEP Gilles Pennelle resigned from his role as director general of the National Rally. Pennelle was in charge of the RN’s blueprint for winning power, dubbed the “Matignon plan.” It was supposed to be so fail-proof that he only had to “hit a button” to launch it. 

Central to the “Matignon plan” was the selection of candidates that could be deployed at an instant’s notice. But that’s where it all went wrong. Many of the candidates turned out to be unsuitable — either because they were unprofessional or, in some cases, made racist or xenophobic remarks.

The outcasts

The French legislative elections include 577 races, meaning parties often pick local activists with little experience to represent them, particularly in districts where they have little chance of winning.

French investigative journalism outlet Mediapart listed 106 RN candidates who had previously made “hateful or conspiratorial statements.” Some of the most dire cases, including one candidate who had been pictured wearing Nazi memorabilia, led the party to officially pull its support from their campaigns.

Viral clips included one RN candidate awkwardly claiming that she could not be accused of racism because she had “a Jew as an ophthalmologist” and “a Muslim as a dentist.” Others were seen panicking or unable to articulate an argument in debates organized by local television stations.

The French legislative elections include 577 races. | Ludovic Marin/Getty Images

These videos served as a reminder of two flaws that have for years combined to put voters off handing power to the French far right: hatefulness and incompetence.

The RN campaign might have survived such glitches if it hadn’t been for a concerted campaign from opponents of Le Pen.

Leaders on the left and in Macron’s camp urged their candidates to combine forces tactically in a bid to keep Le Pen and Bardella from power. Hundreds of left-wing and centrist candidates withdrew from the election to unite the anti-Le Pen vote behind a single contender to take on the RN.

That proved fatal to the far right’s chances. Now it must regroup, ahead of the campaign for the presidency in 2027.

“Jordan Bardella will announce a general reorganization of the party,” RN MEP Philippe Olivier told Le Monde. “It would have happened, no matter what. But there will be peripheral changes to take account of what went wrong.”

The RN has already started to lay out talking points meant to downplay the significance of Sunday’s disappointment. Though it lost most of its runoffs, the RN received the most votes nationwide, party leaders have argued, and increased its share of seats in the assembly by more than 50.

The RN’s triumph has not been canceled but simply “postponed,” Le Pen said Sunday in reaction to the results. She blamed the party’s defeat on an “unnatural alliance” between the left and Macron’s camp.

Leaders on the left and in Macron’s camp urged their candidates to combine forces tactically in a bid to keep Le Pen and Bardella from power. | Amaury Corn and Hans Lucas/Getty Images

The far-right party’s trouble could nonetheless spill over into the new legislature. Le Pen, as group leader, will have to decide how to treat controversial candidates who still managed to get elected. 

These include Roger Chudeau, an MP who brought trouble to his party for arguing that former Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem should not have been allowed to serve in government due to her being French-Moroccan; and Daniel Grenon, who claimed that “North Africans came to power” and that “these people have no place in high office.”