Marine Le Pen has been re-elected leader of the Front National and immediately proposed changing the far-right party’s name to Rassemblement National (National Rally), saying it must serve as a rallying call to new voters.
Le Pen said FN had moved from its roots as a protest group into opposition and was now ready to govern under a new name.
“I have thought and consulted long and hard on the name. It must carry a political message and clearly indicate our political project for France. It must imperatively include the word ‘national’,” she told the party’s conference.
“The nation is at the heart of our engagement and project, that is clear but it is not enough. It [the name] has to express our wish to rally people.
“It must be more than a project; it must be a rallying cry, a call for those who have France and the French at their heart to join us.”
Le Pen announced that party members would be asked to vote on the rebranding in the coming weeks. “It’s up to you to decide,” she told delegates.
For a political leader whose primary objective in recent years has been to soften FN’s image and shed its antisemitic, jack-boot image, the proposed name had unfortunate echoes of the Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP), an extreme-right collaborationist group set up by Marcel Déat, a “neo-Socialist, during the German occupation of France between 1941 and 1944.
Le Pen’s attempts to “de-demonise” the far right appeared to have paid off when she got through to the second round of the presidential vote last May. A chaotic and bizarre performance against Emmanuel Macron in the run-off debate, however, put paid to her slim hopes of reaching the Elysée.
The FN’s two-day conference in Lille, the first since the presidential defeat, was sold as an opportunity to rebrand the party and prepare for next year’s European parliament elections. Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon spoke at the conference on Saturday, saying “history is on our side and will bring us victory.”
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
