Marine Le Pen has placed housing and the cost of living at the heart of her bid for the French presidency, telling supporters in the former mining town of Hénin-Beaumont on September 13 that French citizens would come first in their own country.
The National Rally (RN) leader said the promise applied regardless of skin colour, religion or origin, and that it amounted to a right guaranteed in every other country in the world.
Le Pen said the party’s doctrine of “national priority” would now extend to housing, with French nationals given preferential access to social housing. She also blamed environmental and administrative planning rules for choking construction in the private sector.
On the cost of living, she pledged to cut value added tax on gas, electricity and heating oil from 20 per cent to 5.5 per cent, asking where public money was going while taxes rose and services deteriorated, according to Euronews, which covered the rally.
She has also proposed a referendum on banning the Islamic headscarf in all public spaces.
Hénin-Beaumont, a town of about 26,000 people in the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France, has become the RN’s most emblematic stronghold. Its mayor, Steeve Briois, has held office for 14 years, and Le Pen has represented the department in the National Assembly since 2017.
The rally was her first major campaign appearance since the Paris Court of Appeal restored her eligibility to stand on July 7. The court upheld her conviction over the misuse of European Parliament funds paid to parliamentary assistants but cut the ban on holding elected office from five years to 45 months, 30 of them suspended.
It also imposed a three-year prison term, two years suspended and one year to be served at home under electronic monitoring. Le Pen has taken the case to the Court of Cassation, a step that suspends the tag and allows her to campaign unencumbered.
She leads the first round in most surveys, with recent polling putting her at about 34 per cent. An Ifop study published in July showed her defeating every likely opponent in a second round.
Jordan Bardella, the RN president who would have replaced her as candidate had the ban stood, did not address the crowd. Le Pen led supporters in singing “Happy Birthday” to him, in a gesture read as an answer to reports of friction between the two.
Before travelling to Hénin-Beaumont, Le Pen met RN parliamentarians at a closed-door meeting in the coastal town of Le Touquet on September 12.
Activists from a local anti-fascist collective staged a protest outside the town’s railway station, while Le Pen cancelled a walkabout at the annual flea market because of the weather.
