Such a scenario was unthinkable at the beginning of the year. The name on everyone’s lips at the time was Eric Zemmour, the right-wing warrior, who announced his candidacy by promising to follow Islam and immigration. But Zemmour has peaked, his manifesto very narrow and very ugly, appealing to middle-class Catholics of the main and right wing. Le Pen, on the other hand, is popular with young people and the working class, especially workers who at a younger age would vote for the left. what we in Britain would call Red Wall voters. Economically, Le Pen has always leaned to the left and in recent years has softened its stance on many social issues. In a conversation last year with Macron’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, he was ridiculed for being “soft” on Islam. Unlike Zemmour – and it looks like Darmanin – Le Pen has nothing wrong with Islam, except with Islamist extremists. And here’s the problem for President Macron: how can he describe Le Pen’s National Rally party as far right when his own interior minister mocked it on live television because he was polite to Islam? The fact is that Macron at times during his presidency acted in such a heavy and authoritarian way that much of the public will not fall into his disturbing rhetoric about the progress of the “extreme right”. He is, after all, a president whose police inflicted dozens of horrific injuries on protesters during the 2018/19 Yellow Vest demonstrations, injuries that were condemned by the UN, the European Parliament and human rights organizations. This is a president who submitted to his country probably the strictest quarantine measures of any Western nation and then mocked that his goal by introducing a passport for Covid was to “bag” the unvaccinated or those who did not want to do a third drilling. During a televised debate Thursday night, Le Pen referred to the Covid Passport, expressing her disapproval of the draconian measure and presenting herself as a champion of the nation’s freedom. Lepen seemed confident as she asked questions from journalists and members of the public. She believes that power is with her. Inflation, crime and energy prices are all on the rise in France, as is the number of Covid cases. Just a month ago, Macron told his people that he had won the war on the virus and that Covid masks and passports were no longer needed. He does not dare to impose again even before the elections, because he knows what his political opponents would say: voila, another proof that he is a president who fails on all fronts. On the contrary, Macron’s strategy in the last week of the election campaign is negativity, to resort to the tried and trusted, to attack the “extreme right”. It has worked in the past, but it is unlikely to work this time in the event of a second round between Macron and Le Pen. Macron is hated by millions on the left and they will not heed his call to lend him their vote to keep Lepen out. Just as the British Red Wall collapsed in 2019, 2022 could be the turn of France’s Republican Front to disintegrate and when the dust settles, France could have its first woman president.
