After Marine Le Pen

PARIS — Every week, a group of members of France’s far-right National Rally log on to a video call to discuss politics. They debate electoral strategy, gossip about who’s rising in the party and bemoan their leader and candidate for president in 2022, Marine Le Pen.

“We all have the same conviction that Marine Le Pen won’t win the next elections,” says one participant of the call and a member of the National Council, a 120-member committee that decides on the party’s policies.

“We need to find a new candidate,” said the participant, who asked not be quoted by name for fear of being sidelined.

The group of discontents, a mix of National Council members, regional heavyweights and local representatives, meet online on Fridays. Some are chatterboxes, says the participant; others speak rarely and listen attentively. Another participant says the talks are kept secret from the rest of the party. Some in the group — but not many — have suggested replacing Le Pen before next year’s election.

As the party’s longtime leader embarks on her third attempt to storm the Elysée, few expect her to do better than she did the last time, when she came in second place in the first round of voting, only to be rejected in the runoff against French President Emmanuel Macron.

It’s a view shared by many in the National Rally. And so some are already looking beyond the election to ask: After she loses, what’s next?

“We’ll see what the future of the National Rally will be,” says Nicolas Bay, a National Rally MEP and a critical backer of Le Pen —who says he does not take part in the online talks. “It’s very possible that it won’t necessarily be someone who bears the name Le Pen who will lead the party.”

Brand Le Pen

Marine Le Pen, who took over the party’s leadership from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is a brand name in France — and one of the National Rally’s greatest assets. But some also see her as one of its greatest obstacles to winning the presidency.

While polls show Le Pen’s hardline ideas on immigration and security have become more mainstream, many voters still think of her as either incompetent or scary.

“The [National Rally] vote has spread to all the strata of society,” says Frédéric Dabi, deputy director general for polling agency Ifop, who recently published a study on its electorate. “Marine Le Pen has become the No. 1 candidate for employees, and her ratings among the elderly, managers and graduates, where the RN is not usually strong, are not negligible.”

The same poll, however, showed that Le Pen’s image had worsened since the last presidential election. Another recent study found that 56 percent of the French said they found Le Pen frightening.

While some polls have put Le Pen within reach of Macron in the second round, the vast majority predict her falling short once again.

Le Pen has tried to counter the negative perceptions by giving her interviews a more personal touch and talking about her feelings and her family. “It’s time to drop my armor,” she said in northern France earlier this month. “The French need to know me better, to be able to judge me better.

“Maybe when you are a woman in the political fight, used to taking knocks, you start to appear tough, rigid,” she added. “I think I have the maturity today, to drop this toughness. Under the warrior, there is also a mother.”

Is her strategy working?

“It’s too early to tell” said Sylvain Crépon, a specialist on the far right. “One year before the last election, her polling figures were close to current projections, and she still lost significantly to Macron.”

France’s two-round presidential system makes it difficult for polarizing candidates like Le Pen, who have failed to build bridges with other political parties.

In 2017, she came in second in the first round with 21 percent of the vote compared with 24 percent for Macron. But after the rest of the political spectrum called on their supporters to vote against her, she was trounced in the second round, with 34 percent compared with 66 percent for Macron.

Some think that Macron is unpopular enough among left-wing voters that they will refuse to back him in another face-off against Le Pen.

The French president “is not a dam [holding back the far right],” Olivier Faure, leader of the Socialist party, said in a recent interview. “He’s a bridge.”

“The duel that we have been promised [between Le Pen and Macron] is dangerous for our country,” he said, adding that left-wing voters felt betrayed by the president’s policies after the last election.

But Le Pen has struggled to completely shake off her reputation for dangerous extremism.

Last week, she came out in support of a controversial open letter written by 20 retired generals, arguing that France was headed toward a “civil war” caused by Islamism and the scapegoating of police officers by politicians. Her support for soldiers who warn that the army might have to intervene to save French citizens is dangerous territory for Le Pen.

It’s a reminder of the tightrope she is walking between her efforts to normalize the National Rally and her hard-line reading of the perils facing France.

Third time unlucky

One cold morning in northern France, a dozen National Rally members turned out to show their support to Le Pen. The National Rally leader was fist-bumping supporters and taking selfies, touring France ahead of the regional elections in June.

Not everybody in attendance was an enthusiastic supporter.

“I think the name Le Pen has had its day,” said Dorothée, a part-time shop-owner who has been campaigning for the far right for decades. She said she preferred the party’s vice president, Jordan Bardella, a 25-year-old MEP and rising star in the party, who “would be able to put France on his feet.”

“He’s got charisma, speaks well,” she added. “He would be more energizing than Le Pen.” 

Le Pen may have gone a long way toward detoxifying her party, dissociating it from its roots as a one-issue xenophobic force and disavowing her own calls to leave the eurozone. But voters have soured on her personally.

“She doesn’t cut it; she lacks charisma,” said Lili, an apple-grower, who sells her own produce on the market. “She should have moved on. I would have preferred her niece [Marion Maréchal, a far-right politician turned political institute director], who speaks well and she listens.”

It’s not just the rank and file who are already looking past Le Pen.

According to several elected officials, there are secret talks taking place in the National Rally to prepare for the future.

“We know that the next election is make or break,” said the participant in the call who is also a member of the party’s National Council.

“We are thinking about what comes next,” the participant said. “Let’s say, the talks are a bit under the radar. We used to meet every week at a restaurant, now we talk online,” he said.

According to the participant, some of members of the group support Le Pen’s pugnacious niece Maréchal. Others support Eric Zemmour, a far-right television pundit — neither Maréchal nor Zemmour have unveiled any presidential ambitions. This week, Zemmour was dragged into a controversy about his integrity, after a local councilor from the Socialist Party accused him of sexually harrassing her in the 2000s. Zemmour has not responded to French media’s requests for comments.

“Discussions are taking place, but they are happening very discreetly,” says André Murawski, a regional councilor who left the National Rally in 2018. “Marine Le Pen completely controls the party, and it’s difficult to push for an alternative candidate.”

The closer you get to the top of the party, the less likely members will talk of a future that doesn’t include Le Pen.

Asked about the eventuality of a third defeat for the party’s leader, David Rachline, party heavyweight and mayor of the town of Fréjus, answered: “First we’ll be winning 2022, and then I’ll be working on Le Pen’s campaign for a second mandate.”

But the financial difficulties of the party — France’s campaign watchdog recently revealed that it is over €22 million in debt, more than any other party — could accelerate change.

The lady’s not for turning

Many party insiders greet talk of ousting Le Pen with chuckle. Saying she won’t go easily is putting it lightly. “They are all scared of her,” said a former party adviser. “There are always plots against her, but there is always one who tells on the others.

“There is only one leader, and she takes all the decisions,” the adviser said.

Previous leadership challenges in the party have featured all the brutality and ruthlessness of a family feud. In 2015, Le Pen ousted her father, who had founded the party, then known as the National Front. Le Pen’s niece Maréchal and her then right-hand man Florian Philippot left the party after the 2017 defeat.

Insiders describe Le Pen as a shrewd infighter, keeping an iron grip on the party by ousting or ostracizing potential rivals. Her father made a career out of repeated presidential losses, driving the debate to the right while enjoying an otherwise successful political career. There’s no reason his daughter can’t do the same.

Today, the party’s top brass is the most united it has been for a long time.

“There’s no internal democracy in the party, no fiefdoms, no internal fights between different personalities,” says Sylvain Crépon, specialist of the far right. “As soon as a leader emerges, Marine does what her father did. She removes them, or marginalizes them.”

Bay, the critical backer of Le Pen, was sidelined from the party’s committee in charge of vetting candidates last year, in a move that was seen at the time as retribution for his proximity to Maréchal.

Bay downplayed the affair: “I don’t need to be in all the committees,” he said.

But while he acknowledged that Le Pen currently has “the support of the party and the voters,” he questioned whether that would still hold true forever.

“I think there are personalities of the RN that are emerging,” he said. The question is whether any of them would stand a chance against Le Pen.