Marine Le Pen hurries on, rue de l’Université. She shouldn’t be late. The table is limited that evening at the Lassay hotel. The President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, invited the group leaders to a dinner, on the sidelines of the examination of the text on pension reform. The time has come for negotiation, and the opposition has its say. Including on the far right. Suddenly, the president of the Horizons deputies Laurent Marcangeli breaks the silence. “The French have buried the Republican front to counter the National Rally. It must be treated like a party like the others.” Marine Le Pen relaxes a little in her chair. Obviously, she agrees: “It’s true. We’re tired of being ostracized. You are sectarian, while we vote for your texts!”
It’s been almost thirty years since Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter was relegated to the back of the class. Victim of the sanitary cordon. Oh, of course, members of the government have already extended hospitality to him. Since 2022, Gérald Darmanin has opened his doors twice, for consultation on separatism, then on the orientation and programming law of the Ministry of the Interior (Lopmi). And with manners. To those close to him, he assures her: “I am very urban with her. She is very happy to be received in the ministries.” Recently, it was even the left which, while holding its nose, accepted the votes of the frontists for the rejection motion brought by the ecologists against the immigration bill.
“She is treated like someone from the establishment”
It must be said that the member for Pas-de-Calais is making efforts. At the Assembly refreshment bar, the RN tables often adjoin those of the Republicans. “So, have you been mean to me again?”, says the boss, all smiles, to an elected official from the right, who attacked her on a television set. Sitting in the big red armchairs of the conference room, she calls out to some and addresses others. “And is your trial progressing?”, she asks, for example, Jérôme Lavrilleux, former LR MEP and parliamentary attaché to Alexandre Vincendet. Smile, knowing response: “You’ll see, it will soon be yours!” From now on, people come to see her, we question her. “And on this text, what will you do?” Eric Ciotti often asks her, at the bottom of the steps of the Hemicycle. The majority are not spared. No more than the government. “She is extraordinarily friendly, she even asks about our health,” confides a minister in private. Only the left resists this marinophilia. “I make it a point of honor not to speak to any elected RN, and when it is difficult humanly, I just have to remember the political project that these people want to put in place,” he said. annoy, in chorus, environmentalist and socialist deputies. They denounce, scandalized, “the short-term game” in which Marine Le Pen’s party and the government are engaged.
But from centrists to the right, the observation is shared: “She is treated like someone from the establishment”. Marine Le Pen, less and less radioactive? Those closest to him repeat it over and over again, as if to better convince themselves. “She sees a lot of people, people she wouldn’t have had access to a few years ago.” Recently, it was with Henri Proglio, the former boss of EDF, that she publicly broke bread. In 2010, however, she highlighted the “indecency” of the man who had been forced to give up his remuneration at Veolia. “Poor guy, he will have to be content to live on his 1.6 million euros per month,” she quipped. But times have changed, and Henri Proglio clearly does not hold grudges. It was therefore at Laurent, a plush restaurant in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, with its privatized lounges and its line-of-breed turbot for 160 euros, that the duo buried the hatchet.
Public lunches and private dinners
For more than a year, from her outpost in the National Assembly, Marine Le Pen has been trying to smooth out her image. This is also where she spends most of her time. This summer, a new element was added to the decoration of his office. A painting of a cat, painted and offered by the singer Amanda Lear. It was the vice-president of the National Assembly, Sébastien Chenu, a friend of the artist, who was responsible for transmitting it to his boss. He sometimes organizes Marine Le Pen’s meetings. For those who are reluctant to appear in public alongside the far-right MP, the interviews are done at home. It’s Marine Le Pen who cooks. Also a way to nourish yourself intellectually. Because after the infrequency, it is the incompetence trial that the RN wants to defuse at all costs.
The 2017 second round debate still remains a painful memory that no one in the party wants to relive. All the sailor lieutenants swear: “She works a lot, nothing like previous years.” Please believe them. The story goes back thirteen years. Marine Le Pen rings the doorbell of sovereignist and former advisor to Philippe Séguin Paul-Marie Coûteaux. “Listen, I’m going to take the helm of the RN and I don’t feel solid on my bases because I don’t have a great classical culture. Can you help me?” Plato, Montaigne, Corneille, Pascal… The former MEP then concocted a reading list for him. But since ? What does Marine Le Pen read? A few weeks ago, she finished her first work by Jean-Claude Michéa, a critical philosopher of liberalism, dubbed by the thinkers of the New Right. She also purchased the latest book by François Hollande’s former advisor, Aquilino Morelle, which is dedicated to him. From Jérôme Fourquet, too, even if she gets a little tired of it: “You’ve read one, you’ve read them all…”, concedes one of her close friends.
“No one today holds Marine Le Pen’s brain”
Recently, Marine Le Pen brought together her “Horaces”, this obscure circle of more or less successful advisors who prepare notes for her on diverse and varied subjects. But since the departure of Florian Philippot, she no longer has a special advisor, a united No. 2, nor even an organic intellectual who would help her establish her doctrine. Back in 2021, before the presidential campaign. At her house, a preparatory meeting ends. She lingers with one of the participants. Ask him :
— “So, how do you feel about this campaign?”
— “I think you’re a good candidate, you work hard, but it’s all on you, you’re both the product and the cast.”
— “It’s true, you know, sometimes I feel like I’m dragging a herd of dead elephants.”
“No one today holds Marine Le Pen’s brain,” a relative now swears. Good or bad news ? Certainty, in any case, that the frontist line would currently be a pure Marinist product.
“Marinism”, this indefinable political object. Internally, we don’t know how to qualify it either. “Nationalist?” “Gaullist?” “Social ?” Even more so since her return to the Assembly with fanfare, the far-right MP is having fun blurring the lines. Vote on the texts of your opponents or adapt your positions to those of public opinion. Pragmatism as the praise of common sense. Adaptability, to be a moving target. “Marinism is a force in motion, assures the Pas-de-Calais deputy Bruno Bilde. It is intuitive, it breathes society, it is difficult to catch and seize by its adversaries. It is the ability to surprise, not to be locked up.”
Plasticity and opportunism
But what ideological backbone? Plasticity and opportunism are fraternal twins. Those close to Marine Le Pen still assure her: “Our 2027 program will not be that of 2022, we must bring together more widely.” Expand your electoral base beyond the working classes, even if it means satisfying contradictory interests. No problem for the party to defend retirement at 60 while tabling an amendment aimed at tax exemption for overtime for retirees. Ditto on the full employment law. “They have contradictory and demagogic positions, assures a minister. They can combine a speech in which they say that we are targeting the weakest and develop a criticism of welfare. They also gain on both counts.” In summary: take the pulse first, decide later, risk contradiction rather than unpopularity. The strategy is set. The Elysée is well worth some ambiguities.
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