Marine Le Pen is hoping to finally defeat Emmanuel Macron as the French election commences this week. The polls suggest the election could be tight as a new YouGov survey this week shows that more than half (56 percent) of voters aged 18 to 24 would back Ms Le Pen. Other polls project Ms Le Pen taking 47 percent of the vote to Mr Macron’s 53 among the general population — a much closer gap than when the President beat her in the election five years ago. Ms Le Pen winning would represent a huge moment in European politics – her far right politics has polarised opinion both in France and abroad.
In November last year, Ms Le Pen had the UK in her sights as she urged France to be more forceful when confronting Prime Minister Boris Johnson over their countries’ post-Brexit disputes.
Ms Le Pen warned President Macron: “We must raise our voice with the UK.”
Mr Macron’s administration “keeps repeating threats without ever acting,” she told reporters at an event in Paris, adding: “Either you don’t speak or you act.”
Her comments came as the UK and France were at odds over fishing rights in the English Channel.
Ms Le Pen used to be an advocate of ‘Frexit’ – France leaving the EU – and vowed in 2016 to hold a referendum on France’s membership.
The far right figure then told Nigel Farage in a 2017 interview that the UK had shown leaving the bloc was possible.
She said: “We had been told that it was not possible to leave the EU, and the UK has just demonstrated that, when the people want it, we can set up the conditions to exit the EU. So thank you for showing us the way out of this huge prison.”
Ms Le Pen added that she felt a “sense of relief” after the Brexit vote.
However, after losing the 2017 French election, Ms Le Pen ditched calls for a ‘Frexit’ referendum.
In January 2019, the opposition figure in France said she would support the UK rejoining a “reformed” EU.
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She added: “Money should not be the driver of everything. We are citizens of somewhere, not citizens of nowhere. We cannot waste this by multiculturalism.
“It is the nation, the nation state. Only the EU cannot see it.”
In February 2020, Ms Le Pen told Euronews: “Maybe Great Britain can rejoin us once we’ve built something where each nation conserves their freedom.
“[Brexit] still took three years … there was a real contempt for the people on the part of leaders of the European Union who barely hid wanting to make the divorce as difficult as possible.”