Category Archives: Marine Le Pen

The Guardian view on Fortress Europe: a continent losing its moral compass

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The increasingly draconian approach to irregular migration betrays the spirit of the 1951 refugee convention

Seventy years ago, the 1951 UN refugee convention established the rights of refugees to seek sanctuary, and the obligations of states to protect them. Increasingly, it seems that much of Europe is choosing to commemorate the anniversary by ripping up some of the convention’s core principles.

So far this year, close to 1,000 migrants have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean, more than four times the death toll for the same period in 2020. Many will have been economic migrants. Others will have been fleeing persecution. Increasingly, Europe does not care. All were “irregular”. And all must be discouraged and deterred through a strategy of cruelty.

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Five key takeaways from France’s regional elections

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Analysis: record low turnout makes it difficult to draw clear lessons but both Macron and Le Pen did badly

France’s regional elections produced a humiliating defeat for Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN), stinging failure for Emmanuel Macron and thumping wins for incumbents from the country’s traditional centre-right and centre-left parties.

A record low turnout of less than 35% makes it hard, however, to draw clear lessons for next year’s presidential elections, in which Macron and Le Pen remain clear frontrunners – although the race has certainly got a lot more interesting.

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Macron and Le Pen face new test as France votes again in regional polls

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Second-round voting begins after record low turnout in first round left the two rivals disappointed

France has begun voting in the second round of regional elections after a first round that resulted in a drubbing for Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party, disappointment for Marine Le Pen’s far right and a record low turnout.

For some observers, the outcome of the 20 June first round raised doubts over whether the 2022 presidential election would come down to a duel between the president and Le Pen in a runoff long seen as the most likely scenario.

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Le Pen looks to Provence for last hope of victory in French regional elections

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Poll on knife-edge as parties form alliances in a bid to defeat far-right RN party

At the 17th-century town hall in the Provençal city of Arles, a large tricolour flapped vigorously outside the open window of the mayor’s office last week, animated perhaps by what locals call the mistralet, a gentle summer version of the strong wind that blows through the Rhône valley.

The world heritage city – the largest commune in metropolitan France – has been marked by foreign influence throughout its history: the Romans conquered it in 123BC, leaving the magnificent arena, theatre, necropolis and aqueduct; much later came the artists, Dutchman Vincent Van Gogh and Spanish-born Pablo Picasso among them.

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‘Slap in the face’ for Macron as French voters shun local elections

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Abstention rate estimated at 68%, and exit polls suggest Le Pen’s National Rally failed to get expected support

Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party received what one of its own MPs called a “slap in the face” in regional and department elections on Sunday.

The president and his government failed to mobilise supporters, with an estimated 68% of voters shunning the polling stations – an unprecedented rate of abstention. If there was any consolation for the ruling party it was that exit polls suggested Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally had failed to garner its expected support.

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Marine Le Pen poised to make gains in France’s regional elections

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Sunday’s poll could help far right step further towards political mainstream ahead of 2022 presidential elections

France is voting in the first round of regional elections that could see Marine Le Pen‘s far-right party make gains and step further into the political mainstream.

In Sunday’s election, new assemblies will be elected for mainland France’s 13 regions and 96 departments, with Le Pen‘s National Rally (RN) tipped to win at least one region for the first time in what would be a major coup.

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Could Marine Le Pen finally triumph with her third tilt at French presidency?

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Next year’s Élysée race looks like a battle between a fading Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader. And some believe she might win this time

In Paris’s symbolic Place de la République, under the watchful gaze of France’s allegorical figurehead Marianne, the skateboarders are not in the mood to discuss politics.

For the young here, as everywhere, life has been paused during a pandemic that has halted studies, jobs, socialising and parties. What they want is their lives back, not to talk about an election.

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End of Trump era deals heavy blow to rightwing populist leaders worldwide

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As Biden’s victory sinks in across Brazil, Hungary and elsewhere, dreams of a rightwing global crusade appear to be fading

As the Donald Trump era draws to a close, many world leaders are breathing a sigh of relief. But Trump’s ideological kindred spirits – rightwing populists in office in Brazil, Hungary, Slovenia and elsewhere – are instead taking a sharp breath.

The end of the Trump presidency may not mean the beginning of their demise, but it certainly strips them of a powerful motivational factor, and also alters the global political atmosphere, which in recent years had seemed to be slowly tilting in their favour, at least until the onset of coronavirus. The momentous US election result is further evidence that the much-talked-about “populist wave” of recent years may be subsiding.

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French court to decide on Marine Le Pen ‘steaming excrement’ case

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Judges to decide whether excrement picture damaged far-right leader’s reputation

A long-running legal battle about whether a drawing of a steaming pile of excrement was damaging to the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is finally due to be resolved.

Judges at France’s highest court will sit down on Friday afternoon to begin deciding on their final ruling in a seven-year legal case after Le Pen sued a TV presenter for defamation when he held up a drawing depicting her as excrement during a Saturday night talkshow.

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Lessons of the second world war are at risk of being forgotten, or even rewritten | Sadiq Khan

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As we mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the second world war, with liberal democracies again under siege, Britain should be leading the fight against extremism

Eighty years ago, the start of the second world war saw Nazi Germany invading Poland. Six years later, up to 85 million people were dead. I’m in Poland this weekend to commemorate the start of the bloodiest war in human history.

An entire generation of brave men and women around the globe sacrificed everything to defeat the singular evil of Nazism and fascism.

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Final votes cast as EU awaits parliamentary election results

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France, Germany, Italy and others go to polls on Sunday, with gains expected for nationalist parties

The western world’s largest democratic exercise is nearing its finale as tens of millions of EU citizens in 21 countries go to the polls on Sunday, the last of four days of voting in European parliament elections that will shape the bloc’s future.

Polls suggest the vote will produce a more fragmented parliament than ever before, with the two centre-right and centre-left groups that have dominated Europe’s politics forecast to lose their joint majority for the first time, and nationalist and populist forces to make gains.

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Europe’s far-right leaders unite with a vow to ‘change history’

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Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen are joining with allies to create what may be the third-largest bloc in the European parliament

Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini led a rally of his European far-right allies in front of Milan’s Gothic cathedral on Saturday. He pledged to change history after this week’s EU elections by making the populist alliance one of the largest groupings in the European parliament.

Flanked by France’s Marine Le Pen and leaders from nine other nationalist parties, Salvini began his speech to the packed Piazza del Duomo by quoting the British writer GK Chesterton: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.” He added that his group would remould Europe “not for our sake, but for our children”.

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‘Not a statesman’: Matteo Salvini – the Zelig of Italian politics

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League head attempts to burnish his credentials as leader of Europe’s far-right with home-turf rally

Nino Governale was the perfect target for the teenage Matteo Salvini. The PE teacher hailed from Sicily and could hardly get through the weekly lesson at the prestigious Alessandro Manzoni high school in Milan without being goaded by his pupil.

“Salvini was as arrogant at 14 as he is today,” Governale says. “His favourite game was to antagonise. At that time he was against all southerners – we were the enemies coming to Milan and stealing jobs.”

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Marine Le Pen makes ‘OK’ hand gesture used by white supremacists

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France’s far-right National Rally leader asks ally to remove controversial selfie from Facebook

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, has asked an Estonian ally to remove a selfie from Facebook in which the pair made a controversial “OK” hand gesture, which has been linked to white-power messaging.

Le Pen was in Tallinn to meet MPs from Estonia’s far-right EKRE party, which recently became part of the country’s coalition government, as part of cross-continent negotiations on setting up a new bloc of nationalist and far-right forces after European elections next week.

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Will the radical right consolidate power in the heart of the EU this year? | Cas Mudde

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May’s European elections offer a chance for the resurgent far right to collaborate, consolidate – and bend the EU to its will

Every five years, millions of Europeans across the continent go to the polls to elect their national members of the European parliament. This May we’ll be doing so again, in what could be a watershed election for rightwing populists.

Although radical right parties won pretty big in the past two European elections, their influence within the various umbrella groups that make up the European parliament’s power blocs remained limited. This year, most rightwing populist parties may make only modest seat gains. But they also have the opportunity to create, for the first time, a serious rival to the centrist political groups that until now have dominated the EU’s governing body.

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