French President Emmanuel Macron decided to take a punt by calling snap elections. Now will voters do the same? For all its insistence that it’s no longer far right, for all its reversals and reviews on issues like pension reform and support for Ukraine, the cornerstone of Marine Le Pen’s party remains identity politics and the notion of national preference – a brand unseen in France’s high halls of power since the Nazi occupation of World War II.
We ask what Le Pen and her untested 28-year-old standard bearer Jordan Bardella stand for. Why him? Why not her in this race to govern?
And what about the far right's foils? The left’s electoral alliance includes reformist Socialists and Greens. But both the National Rally and the centrists of Emmanuel Macron's party raise the spectre of a far left that they say is anti-Semitic.
Is the French president right to tar Le Pen and the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon with the same brushstroke? Is Macron a rampart against extremism or an enabler? The first clue will come in just 10 days' time, with the first round of snap legislative elections.
Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Guillaume Gougeon and Louise Guibert.
