It was a moment of plus ça change in France this month when the leader of the far-right Front National, Marine Le Pen, announced a rebrand for her party. Le Pen proposed the new name Rassemblement National (National Rally) at the party conference in Lille in an apparent bid to disassociate the party from its past and appeal to voters beyond the traditional voter base.
The announcement prompted newspaper Libération to print the frontpage headline ‘Ressemblement National’ – ressemblement meaning ‘to look the same’. Certainly, Le Pen’s speech included some of the age-old FN priorities, such as cracking down on crime and immigration. In her speech, she said that both illegal and legal immigration were no longer viable.
Perhaps as part of the rebrand, and in a desperate-looking move, Le Pen invited former adviser to President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon – who seems to be trying to carve out a niche for himself as a European populism cheerleader – on to the stage to address the conference.
Le Pen has focused on names before in her campaign to de-demonise the FN. During the presidential election last year, her campaign posters simply read ‘Marine’, rather than ‘Marine Le Pen’. But since her relative success in the presidential election (last year’s loss was still by far the best result the FN has ever had), the FN has suffered from internal disputes. Some members blamed Le Pen’s policy of withdrawing from the Euro as being key to why she lost the election. And in September last year, Florian Philippot left the party – Philippot was instrumental in Le Pen’s presidential campaign and in softening the FN’s image.
Le Pen’s father and founder of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, said the name change was ‘political suicide’. Jean-Marie Le Pen was ousted from the party by his own daughter and seems intent on turning into a parody of himself. A promotional video for his latest book sees him emerging Darth Vader-like in a glass lift from beneath the floor, wearing all black as ‘The Imperial March’ plays in the background.