France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Tuesday told AFP she hoped to run for president for a fourth time next year and face off against a “centrist” candidate in the second round.<\/p>\n
“I would like a runoff against the centrist bloc,” said the 57-year-old politician, who in the last two presidential elections made it to the second round.<\/p>\n
The far-right National Rally (RN) party is banking on its best chance yet at winning power in 2027, when centrist President Emmanuel Macron steps down after two consecutive terms in office.<\/p>\n
Le Pen is hoping to be her anti-immigration, Eurosceptic party’s candidate if an appeals court in July does not ban her from office over an alleged fake jobs scam in European Parliament.<\/p>\n
“If the judges don’t stop me, I will run,” she said.<\/p>\n
If she cannot, her lieutenant — 30-year-old party leader Jordan Bardella — will vie for the top job instead.<\/p>\n
“The presidential election will almost certainly be decided between the National Rally and the centrist bloc, if they manage to agree on a single candidate,” Le Pen said.<\/p>\n
She implied she wanted this to ensure legitimacy in the case her party won.<\/p>\n
“It will be necessary to have the strength of a vote in favour of a chosen candidate — not one cast merely to reject the other candidate,” she said.<\/p>\n
The centrist camp’s main contender so far seems to be former premier Edouard Philippe, the leader of the Horizons party who was re-elected as mayor of the northern port city of Le Havre last month.<\/p>\n
Some believe Jean-Luc Melenchon, the firebrand leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, could manage to reach the second round for the first time if the centrist vote were split between several candidates.<\/p>\n
“There is a real risk that Melenchon has a more solid base than the central bloc,” she said.<\/p>\n
The far right has especially sought to demonise the hard left after the fatal beating in February of a far-right activist in the city of Lyon that has been blamed on the hard left.<\/p>\n
Le Pen has sought to distance the RN from the antisemitic legacy of her father, and has accused LFI of antisemitic comments in the context of the Gaza war.<\/p>\n
Melenchon came in fourth in the 2012 and 2017 elections, and third in the last polls in 2022.<\/p>\n
Le Pen came third in 2012, then twice made the runoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Tuesday told AFP she hoped to run for president for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7704,123,198,375,5,7708,7715,1071,7703,3954,7702,2967,7706,7707,7716,7709,346,7705],"class_list":{"0":"post-10014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-accountability","9":"tag-afp","10":"tag-democracy","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-french-fifth-republic","14":"tag-french-politicians","15":"tag-government","16":"tag-jean-luc-mlenchon","17":"tag-jordan-bardella","18":"tag-la-france-insoumise","19":"tag-national-rally","20":"tag-organized-events","21":"tag-political-events","22":"tag-political-ideologies","23":"tag-political-parties-of-the-french-fifth-republic","24":"tag-politics","25":"tag-politics-of-france"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}