France’s far-right party now ‘adult’ and needs name change: Le Pen

Marine Le Pen, National Front (FN) political party leader, attends the party's convention in Lille, France, March 10, 2018. (Reuters)

PARIS: France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Friday her National Front party needs a name change because it has become “adult” and ready to govern.
Nine months after Le Pen was defeated by centrist Emmanuel Macron for president in a bruising battle between nationalists and globalists, the FN is struggling to rebound.
As FN president, she said she would propose a new name for the party at its conference on Sunday.
“The National Front has become adult ... its nature has changed. It has gone from a party first of protest in its youth, then an opposition party to a party of government,” Le Pen said on French television.
The FN “must acquire the culture of alliances... the culture of a governing party and changing its name is one of the ways to let it be known,” she said. Le Pen goes into the conference weakened by her poor performance in a final TV debate against Macron, which raised questions about her fitness to lead the world’s fifth-biggest economy.
She defended her far-right party’s stance against immigration and in defense of French culture and security.
The trained lawyer, who took over the FN leadership from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011, is running unopposed for a third term at the helm at the conference starting Saturday in the northern city of Lille.
The high point will come Sunday when Le Pen will announce a proposed new name for the party, turning a page on the anti-Semitic, openly racist Front of her former paratrooper dad.
“Without a name change we will not be able to forge alliances. And without alliances we will never be able to take power,” she told a party gathering in the eastern Alsace region last month.
Since the presidential campaign and June general election in which the FN bagged only eight seats, the party and its leader have appeared deflated.
This week Le Pen seemed heartened by the strong gains made by the allied anti-immigrant League party in Italy’s general election, hailing it as a “new stage in the awakening of the people.”
But despite her fighting rhetoric, her appetite for battle appears dented.
The 49-year-old mother of three told French radio recently that she would gladly step aside before the 2022 presidential election if another candidate was “better placed to unite people and help our ideas triumph.”