Editorial. Do Marine Le Pen’s declarations on the rule of law represent a simple smokescreen?

The rule of law must not be “contested”, according to Marine Le Pen, who spoke on Sunday at a meeting in Nice. Comments which may seem balanced, even if in fact the leader of the far-right party is in many respects more radical than the Minister of the Interior.

At a meeting on Sunday October 6 in Nice, Marine Le Pen claimed to have a “major difference” with Bruno Retailleau. Now the leader of the extreme right poses as guarantor of “the rule of law”. The Minister of the Interior caused an outcry by ruling that the rule of law was not “neither sacred, in intangible” . Not at all, replies Marine Le Pen, who assures us that it should not be contested because, she says, “the rule of law is the submission of all to democratically defined rules, and it is one of the immense conquests of European civilization.”

She gives a lesson in moderation, almost a lesson in deportment, to the Minister of the Interior, just to show that she is at least responsible. Always this tireless quest for respectability. Except that basically, Marine Le Pen is even more radical than Bruno Retailleau since in the same speech, she accused successive governments of having established the rule of law “an instrument of submission of peoples who would no longer have the democratic freedom to develop the law”. “We will never accept this!” she thundered, a way of calling on voters to revolt against the rule of law, because their vote would no longer be taken into account. Furthermore, let us recall that the essential part of the RN program, and first of all the discriminatory principle of “national preference”is unconstitutional, and therefore incompatible with the current rule of law.

We all know the famous Chinese proverb: “When the wise man points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger. When Marine Le Pen waves her finger “demonization”, it is better to look at the moon of the RN, that is to say the reality of its project. But this slightly confused pas de deux also illustrates the unease that reigns within the RN.

The far-right party is stuck. He is not in the majority, but he wants to give Michel Barnier a chance. At the risk of being reduced to the government’s role as a crutch, a role that he previously criticized the right for. This “at the same time” becomes very uncomfortable when Bruno Retailleau multiplies his martial declarations on immigration and security. Marine Le Pen even described it on Sunday as“ardent defender of the sovereign program” of the RN. With the risk that Lepenist voters will return to this muscular right. This is how Nicolas Sarkozy siphoned off the votes of Jean-Marie Le Pen, bringing him to 10% in the 2007 presidential election. And who was the strategic director of this campaign for the National Front? A certain Marine Le Pen.