This time next week, we could be confronted with the knowledge that the French far-right party, the Rassemblement National, has won a majority in the lower house of France’s Parliament. At a minimum, the party of Marine Le Pen is widely expected to be the single biggest force after these elections.
Inevitably, this has prompted analysts, businesses and markets to ask themselves what France might look like should the far-right come to power. Not least because a victory here, where Le Pen is merely running as an ordinary MP and her disciple Jordan Bardella is the leader of the campaign, could be an indication of what to expect in 2027, when Le Pen will be competing to accomplish her lifelong ambition of becoming French President.
In enquiring about the nature of a far-right government installing itself in Paris, many have been eager to reach for the example of Georgia Meloni. Another far-right leader, heading up a party that is these days euphemistically referred to as ‘post-fascist’, there was plenty of anxiety when Meloni arrived as Italy’s Prime Minister in 2022.
Yet so far, it must be recognised that the impact on Italy, the EU and the economy has been relatively minimal. If LGBT rights and migrant welfare are of little consequence to you – as is often the case for businesses and market traders – then Meloni’s time in power has been rather inconsequential overall. Italy’s economic woes, such as they are, have been the kind that would have faced any government and it is unlikely any moderate centre-left or centre-right leader would have fared much better.
Thus, when we see comparisons between the French and Italian far-right, it is not only a cold, analytical expectation of what will come, but it is also often a hope that things won’t be so bad after all.
I believe that both the expectation and the hope are misplaced, for they mistake the nature of the French far-right.
In the case of Meloni and her party, Fratelli d’Italia, she had the chance to shape the party’s identity during its rise into the mainstream. Even as recently as the 2018 Italian general election, FdI was a small party. Prior to that, it was marginal at best. Meloni was able to take over and nurture the party just as it was beginning to professionalise and seriously consider what the act of governing could look like. The FdI we know today is, more or less, her creation.
Things are not so simple for Le Pen and the Rassemblement National. In the case of the RN, the party’s real mainstream breakthrough came under the leadership of Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. A neo-Nazi and an antisemite, Le Pen Senior hit the headlines when he got through to the second round of the French presidential election in 2002. The party Marine took over in 2011 was already possessed of an established (and extreme) culture and vision for government.
Certainly Marine Le Pen has used her influence and control over the last 13 years to try and moderate her party. But where manifesto promises can be dropped, modified or obfuscated, it is harder to censor the hearts and minds of the RN’s officials and elected politicians. There can be little doubt that the French far-right remains deeply intertwined with hostility to the EU, cordiality towards Putin, climate change denial and fantasy economics.
Look beyond the party’s headline commitments and this reality emerges for any willing to see. True, they officially dropped any idea of leaving the EU or the euro. Yet their latest manifesto still commits them to exiting the European electricity market and cutting the VAT rate on fuels to below the level required by EU law. They might not have plans for a Brexit-style referendum, but they are calling for a rebate on France’s EU budget contributions and have plainly stated their willingness to unilaterally withhold payments if necessary.
Most worryingly, they have maintained a promise to implement a constitutional reform that would explicitly place French law above EU law. This would be a major attack against the foundational order of the EU, for without common law between its members the EU cannot function. Frexit may have been removed from the official list of pledges but its spirit lives on, no less diminished.
These are not the ambitions of a moderate seeking respectability. They are the radical policies of destabilisation of a true populist. This is not another Meloni but another Liz Truss.
In Britain, Truss led a disastrous and ultimately short-lived government. A hard-right plan of uncosted economic experimentation roiled markets and sent both the British economy and its politics into turmoil. More mainstream institutions had warned against this path yet the Truss doctrine held that conflict with the ‘establishment’ was not merely an unfortunate but necessary consequence, it was a sign that the path was true. Conflict with other institutions, with banks, with markets, with other parties, with any checks or balances, were not necessarily to be enjoyed for their own sake but they were to be understood as an essential validation, a reflection that this was a set of policies that would overturn the old and broken order to usher in something new and revitalising.
It is this elevation of conflict and disruption that would drive a far-right government in France. Le Pen’s party are playing it safe in the campaign today but every now and then the truth breaks through; the reality of a party that would greatly enjoy fighting Brussels and who are determined to undermine the EU. It is a party that has changed, undoubtedly, but whose basic instincts have never been truly overturned.
It may not come immediately - for the presidential elections in 2027 are still the real prize for Le Pen - but sooner or later the true face of Rassemblement National will be revealed. Those who hope for a Meloni 2.0 should not be lulled into a false sense of security.