French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen on Wednesday drew parallels between a hard-left politician’s call for a march towards the prime minister’s office and the assault on Capitol Hill by supporters of former US President Donald Trump.
The comments marked a hardening of language by Le Pen, who has framed tactical voting in Sunday’s inconclusive parliamentary ballot as an establishment plot to keep her party out of power.
The leftwing New Popular Front (NFP) unexpectedly won most seats but with no group having gained an absolute majority, France has been plunged into uncertainty, with no obvious path to a stable government.
Le Pen said the NFP has almost “subversive attitudes since they are calling for the Matignon to be taken by force, from what we could understand,” referring to the prime minister’s office.
“It’s their assault on the Capitol,” Le Pen added, in a reference to when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a bid to overturn his election defeat.
The hard-left France Unbowed, which is part of the NFP, immediately rejected her accusation.
After President Emmanuel Macron asked centrist Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to stay on for now to run current affairs, former France Unbowed lawmaker Adrien Quatennens had accused Macron of wanting to “steal” the left’s victory and suggested a “big popular march” to the prime minister’s office.
Quatennens said Le Pen was “nuts” to see his post for a march as a call for insurrection.
Le Pen has spent the last few years cleaning up the image of a party once known for its xenophobic and antisemitic attitudes and she now has to decide which direction to take if it is to break through and win power in the 2027 presidential election.
Opinion polls had projected her anti-immigration, eurosceptic National Rally (RN) would win Sunday’s election but the RN finished third behind the NFP and Macron’s centrists.
