the role of arbitrator that the National Rally can play

The National Rally has made it known that it intends more than ever to be at the centre of the game. In her speech in Hénin-Beaumont on Sunday, Marine Le Pen alternated between giving Michel Barnier good points and warnings.

The National Rally claims Michel Barnier and his government “under surveillance”in the words of Marine Le Pen in The Sunday TribuneSunday, September 8. The Le Pen party is delighted to have regained a decisive role as arbiter. It’s arithmetic. Since the other two blocs, left and center, are incapable of dialoguing, the RN and its 126 deputies become essential again. Michel Barnier will need their abstention to overcome the censure, just as the New Popular Front will need the rallying of far-right elected officials to bring down the government. In the Assembly, the RN has become the master of the clocks, it will blow hot and cold, perhaps until a censure could lead to a new dissolution next June.

Marine Le Pen chose this strategy because of this endless quest for respectability. After forcing her deputies to smile, keep quiet and wear a tie for two years, she thought she had reached the goal. Crash, in the legislative elections, the Republican front pushed the far right out of power. Since she took the lead of her party 13 years ago, the famous “de-demonization” has been Marine Le Pen’s myth of Sisyphus. She pushes the rock of the trivialization of the far right up the hill. And with each election, it tumbles back down and falls back on her feet. So she tries her luck again by calling on public opinion to show that unlike the left, the RN is a responsible party, which does not want chaos.

This is a strategy that is not without risks for Marine Le Pen. First, within the party itself, many do not understand why the RN should give a chance to Michel Barnier, a man who was already a minister 31 years ago, who has devoted a large part of his career to European construction and has a slightly techno profile. In short, a pure product of this “soft right” and pro-European that the Le Penists have always denounced. The proof, Friday morning, the RN deputy of the Somme Jean-Philippe Tanguy treated the Prime Minister as “fossil of political life”, and even to be “one of the stupidest politicians of the Fifth Republic.” Above all, endorsing the Barnier government means taking the risk for Marine Le Pen of being swallowed up by this famous “system” that she claims to replace. She is now part of it. How then can we embody a credible alternative when the day comes? By dint of trying to disguise itself as a responsible and harmless party, the RN could well end up as an empty shell.