BORDEAUX, France — As France’s newly appointed prime minister is sweating about crunch budget talks, Marine Le Pen is relishing the prospect.
The far-right leader fired up a crowd of supporters on Sunday in Bordeaux as she lashed out at President Emmanuel Macron for bringing the country to the verge of chaos, casting her party as the only real alternative after years of business-as-usual by mainstream parties.
“The country is blocked by two forces … on the one hand a president who organizes institutional paralysis … on the other hand [far-left] France Unbowed that is trying to bring the country to a standstill by having hooded petits bourgeois burn trash cans,” she said in reference to recent nationwide protests supported by leftist groups.
Before Le Pen took the stage, her former partner and National Rally heavyweight Louis Aliot gave a fiery speech on democracy and freedom of speech, accusing the far left of fueling violence as he paid tribute to slain U.S. conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, eliciting roars from the crowd.
The far-right leader spoke as newly appointed Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is launching critical talks with parties from the outgoing center-right coalition and extending an olive branch to the moderate left to pass the 2026 budget and cut the country’s jaw-dropping deficit.
Le Pen in her speech put the blame squarely on Macron for the seemingly never-ending political crisis and accused him of “confiscating the ball to try and stop the game” by appointing a third prime minister from his camp in just over a year despite record low popularity and a shrinking number of MPs.
Re-upping her call for a snap election, Le Pen left it to her top lieutenant, National Rally President Jordan Bardella, to expand on familiar red button issues such as migration and France’s contribution to the EU, focusing instead on the dire state of the country’s economy and its decline on the international stage.
While Le Pen is keen on showing that her party was not an agent of chaos but fighting for voters’ priorities, she is leaving very little breathing room to the new prime minister, signaling that she is willing to topple as many prime ministers as needed on her way to power.
The far-right party’s take-no-prisoners approach to budget talks is seen as a winning game among its top brass. A deal between Macron’s camp, the mainstream right and the moderate left would be political gold for Le Pen, reinforcing her narrative that the political elite is colluding to keep her from power.
“The National Rally is not up for sale to the highest Macronist bidder, as opposed to [the conservative] Les Républicains and the Socialists,” Bardella hammered home on stage. “We are not like them.”
On Saturday, Lecornu signaled his intention to seek out support within moderate groups on the left in a wide-ranging interview with local newspapers, extending several entreaties and ruling out “a political deal” with the National Rally.
In private, Le Pen and her top lieutenants have likened a potential agreement between Macron’s camp and the Socialists to a mutual kiss of death.
While the far-right leader has refrained until now to call for the French president to step down, the crowd on Sunday chanted “Macron, démission,” seemingly following the lead of Bardella and others in the party’s top brass, who are urging the president to step down — something he has repeatedly ruled out.
That would present a potential challenge to Le Pen who is currently barred from running in an election over embezzlement — she denies all charges and will face an appeal trial in January to try and overturn the verdict.
To her supporters’ delight, she made it clear on stage that she was going nowhere. The far right leader emerged from the summer in a hawkish mood, turning the thumb down on the outgoing prime minister quicker than anyone thought, and boosting her supporters’ morale ahead of local elections in March.
“I am a determined, stubborn, combative woman, and I am not going to apologize for it.”
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