French anti-immigration leader Marine Le Pen invited the nation to take part in the National Front’s (FN) relaunch on Saturday, while she lashed out at unpopular President Emmanuel Macron in her first speech in months. She might also drop her plans to exit the EU, a party MP said.
Gilbert Collard, a National Front MP, said Le Pen could drop her plans fro France to leave the eurozone when asked during a TV interview.
Collard told France 2: “Yes, I think so. She’s a very smart politician, and she understand that even if you are right, you can be wrong in terms of public opinion.”
“Imposing an exit from the euro, even if it is a very, very bad currency, is not a good thing in the sense that public opinion does not want it. In a democracy, you don’t win against public opinion.”
In front of a crowd of about 500 in the northeastern town of Brachay, an FN stronghold, she spoke of her determination to continue. On Saturday she said that she was “determined” to revitalise her movement after the summer holidays “with a burning sense of duty not for me but for you, not alone, but with you”, she added.
“The new organisation will bear a new name which we can discuss during our exchanges and which will be chosen by you,” Le Pen told her audience.
The FN leader said: “Our political family is the only one capable of embodying” a force that could counter the new centrist movement of President Emmanuel Macron, AFP reported.
Le Pen told FN supporters according to Deutsche Presse Agentur: “The great enterprise of refounding the national movement to which I invite you … but also all French people, is inspired only by duty: the duty to take action and to win so that France can remain France for its children and for the world.”
Frexit however has divided the National Front for years. It was actually a major dividing factor in Le Pen’s worse-than-expected performance against Macron in the general election.
The FN’s vice president Florian Philippot, the architect of the anti-EU policy, has pushed the Frexit notion inside the National Front, but open disagreement over the party’s line persists.
The FN wants rebrand itself because the party is up against fire-brand Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left Eurosceptic, pro-immigration France Unbowed party too. The radical-leftist Unbowed France party, with 17 seats in parliament, touts itself as the country’s leading opposition.
On Saturday, Le Pen, noted: “We are the exact antithesis of Macronism.” She lambasted the president for his “policy of perpetual precariousness”, a reference to his reforms to the labour code that will make it easier for employers to hire and fire staff.
“Macronism is the triumph of the dominant class whose only moral veneer is human rights and whose only values and purpose is money,” she added.
Le Pen pointed out that Macron has failed to change the course of the country during his first four months in office, particularly in issues regarding labor reforms, immigration and security.
“Don’t be mistaken, Mr Macron’s dismantling efforts target not only the essence of our institutions but also society as a whole and each and every one of us, including on labor rules,” she said.
