France: Marine Le Pen opens her presidential campaign at the RN congress in Orléans and says Jordan Bardella would be her prime minister

Marine Le Pen, the National Rally (RN) candidate for France’s presidential election next spring, gave her first campaign speech on Sunday 25 October at the party’s congress in Orléans, promising to form a “national unity” government if elected, franceinfo reported.

Le Pen said the government would be “open and pluralist” and confirmed that Jordan Bardella, who was re-elected RN president on Saturday, would be her prime minister: “The prime minister, and mine will be Jordan Bardella, will be the conductor of the government orchestra,” she said, BFMTV reported (our translation). She said she would step down as leader of the RN’s MPs in the National Assembly “from tomorrow” so that voters could be sure of electing “a woman who will not be the man of a party”.

Le Pen said she would write the principle of a single “national community” into the Constitution and that she wanted France to be a “nation of peace”. She said she would not send “our young people to die” in “wars that are not ours”. An Ipsos-BVA poll for Le Parisien, carried out after the 17 October unrest, put her at 32% to 33.5% of first-round voting intentions, depending on the scenario, BFMTV reported.

Bardella told the congress that 8,500 people were present. He promised higher pay for teachers and a “breaker pays” principle under which people who damage property during unrest would have to pay for it. His speech was briefly interrupted by activists holding a banner; the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) said its members were behind it, that they had been forcibly removed and that it would file a complaint. RN vice-president Sébastien Chenu said the activists wanted to disrupt “a major democratic event”.

The Loiret prefecture banned demonstrations in Orléans from 7am to 10pm local time, citing “a probable risk of clashes”, a ban upheld by the administrative court. About 100 anti-fascist protesters gathered outside the banned area, BFMTV reported.

See also: France: 410,000 march nationwide according to the Interior Ministry.