In truth, she and her de facto No. 2, Jordan Bardella, surfed to triumph in the European election with, among other things, a deceitful form of Europhobia. They exploited a hazy knowledge of European affairs among even the pro-European part of the French electorate.
As a Briton who has lived in France for 27 years, I have a chilling sense of that old English expression “déjà vu.” The British tabloid press and the right wing of the Conservative party prepared the ground for Brexit with a similar campaign of denegation, lies and baseless claims that Britain would thrive if freed from the deadweight of European law.
Eight years after the Brexit vote, 55 percent of Britons think that they made a mistake and only 31 percent still think the U.K. is better off outside the European Union. Strangely, Brexit — hailed as a freedom movement by Le Pen at the time — was never mentioned by the National Rally during the European election.
Some officials in Brussels refer to President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap parliamentary election as France’s “Brexit moment.” Macron’s hazardous decision to confront Le Pen is, they say, as foolish as the former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to face down Brexiteers in a referendum in June 2016.
Rather than destroying the threat from the right with an audacious vote, the danger is that the French vote — like the U.K. referendum — will simply spark years of political and economic recriminations.
The comparison is, in one respect, false. In European terms, the French election is far more important. This could be the most destructive national election in the 70-year history of the European project.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
