Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen heads into her second-round duel against President Emmanuel Macron with a new poster at the heart of her campaign, plastered with the new slogan “For all French people”. This marks the latest step in her communication strategy aimed at “de-demonising” her party.
Le Pen unveiled on Tuesday her new campaign poster for the April 24 second round. Gone is the previous poster zoomed in on her smiling face, above the line “Stateswoman”. Now we have a similarly smiley photo of her in a bare office setting, with the words “For all French people”.
On the face of it, the new poster is “quite typical” for second-round candidates keen for a “less partisan image enabling them to reach voters beyond their core support”, said Marion Ballet, an expert on political communication at Paris-Saclay University.
Like Macron’s second-round poster, Le Pen’s makes no reference to her party. In both cases, this is a “response” to French people’s “growing mistrust of the political party structure”, Ballet said.
The omission of Le Pen’s name, meanwhile, can be seen as a continuation of her strategy to normalise the National Rally party (Rassemblement National or RN) and rid it of associations with her father Jean-Marie, the party’s founder and leader from 1972 to 2011. She wants to get rid of the “sectarian” image the name Le Pen still conjures amongst large parts of the French electorate, Ballet pointed out.
Affiche du premier tour (à gauche) et affiche du second tour (à droite) de Marine Le Pen, qui avait appelé dès dimanche soir “tous ceux qui n’ont pas voté Emmanuel Macron” à voter pour elle le 24 avril. #Présidentielle2022pic.twitter.com/vP9vWap6xk
So the image says a lot about Le Pen’s bid for political respectability, even if the “substance of her discourse remains xenophobic, however softened it might seem”, said Stéphane Wahnich, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University and author of the book Marine Le Pen prise aux mots : décryptage du nouveau discours frontiste (“Marine Le Pen’s Use of Language: Uncovering the National Front’s New Discourse”).
Le Pen’s new poster also prompts a telling comparison with her poster for her first face-off against Macron in 2017, which showed her sitting on a wooden table with a bookcase in the background – “reminiscent”, as Wahnich puts it, of the august décor of the Élysée Palace.
Such a change shows that she does not want to jump ahead and conjure an image of herself in the president’s grand residence before the vote, Wahnich continued: This time, “she wants to portray a more modest image”.
The way Le Pen sat in that 2017 picture – sitting nonchalantly at that stately desk, with her skirt going up above the knee – was a “rather provocative posture showing her as an unabashedly feminine candidate”, said Jean-Philippe De Oliveira, a specialist in political communication at Grenoble Alpes University.
The new poster is “simpler, without the provocative aspect”, De Oliviera continued. It allows her to “look the part” by “suggesting that she understands what it means to run for the presidency”, he went on.
Marine Le Pen’s campaign poster and slogan for the second round of the 2017 French presidential election is pictured during a press conference for its presentation on April 26, 2017 in Paris.AFP – THOMAS SAMSON
‘Presenting herself as a normal person’
This more humble image also suggests she will give a more competent performance than her greatly criticised showing in the 2017 debate against Macron – when he calmly reeled off economic figures while she took recourse to her notes mid-sentence.
The softer self-projection even extends to the font Le Pen is using on her poster. “She opted for round, relatively thin letters for her slogan, connoting a non-aggressive image,” Wahnich said.
And above all, there is Le Pen’s smile. “It’s a frank smile, unlike the one in the 2017 poster,” said Christian Delporte, a specialist in the history of political communication also at Paris-Sarclay University. “It’s a way of placing her own personality centre stage – because Le Pen thinks she’s succeeded in creating a positive public image in France and that she’s got to capitalise on this in order to reach out beyond her party’s usual voters,” Delporte continued.
This depiction of a breezily smiling woman – with a “simple, modest” air – fits in well with Le Pen’s communication strategy since the start of her campaign, Ballet noted. The RN leader “made her cats into social media stars”, Ballet continued; Le Pen has also made much of Ingrid, her best friend since childhood, living with her as a “housemate”.
Thus Le Pen is “taking the politics out of her message in favour of a bid to present herself as a normal person”, Ballet added.
Le Pen the girl next door is by no means a popular campaign image amongst far-right grandees: “It’s an obvious break with the movement’s traditional approach to communication, which is focused on the image of a strong leader whom people can rally around,” Wahnich put it.
Two messages in one slogan
But it is perfectly natural for Le Pen to prioritise this kind of image: It marks the latest stage in the strategy she’s worked on since taking the reins from her father in 2011 – a strategy based on “de-demonising” her party; the approach encapsulated in its name change replacing Front with Rally in 2018.
“This poster represents the logical conclusion of this de-demonisation strategy,” Wahnlich said. “It’s very different from the message Jean-Marie Le Pen conveyed with his famous ‘Le Pen, le peuple’ posters [used from the late 1980s to the late 1990s] – there’s no longer any reference to the people, so it’s not the same populist phrasing.”
Nevertheless, De Oliveira said, Le Pen’s “For all French people” slogan operates on two levels: “On one level, it’s the most neutral of messages, because all incoming presidents say they will work for all French people. In this light, her choice of words is acceptable to all voters, in particular those who cast their ballots for Jean-Luc Mélenchon [the far-left populist who came a close third in the first round, garnering some 22 percent of the vote].”
At the same time, Wahnich added, there is a subtle but crucial difference with Macron’s slogan, “All of us”: By adding the word “French”, Le Pen is “excluding those she doesn’t see as French”.
FREDERICTON – A look at Blaine Higgs, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick.
Born: March 1, 1954.
Early years: The son of a customs officer, he grew up in Forest City, N.B., near the Canada-U.S. border.
Education: Graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1977.
Family: Married his high-school sweetheart, Marcia, and settled in Saint John, N.B., where they had four daughters: Lindsey, Laura, Sarah and Rachel.
Before politics: Hired by Irving Oil a week after he graduated from university and was eventually promoted to director of distribution. Worked for 33 years at the company.
Politics: Elected to the legislature in 2010 and later served as finance minister under former Progressive Conservative Premier David Alward. Elected Tory leader in 2016 and has been premier since 2018.
Quote: “I’ve always felt parents should play the main role in raising children. No one is denying gender diversity is real. But we need to figure out how to manage it.” — Blaine Higgs in a year-end interview in 2023, explaining changes to school policies about gender identity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
GATINEAU, Que. – Treasury Board President Anita Anand will take on the additional role of transport minister this afternoon, after Pablo Rodriguez resigned from cabinet to run for the Quebec Liberal leadership.
A government source who was not authorized to speak publicly says Anand will be sworn in at a small ceremony at Rideau Hall.
Public Services and Procurement Minister Jean-Yves Duclos will become the government’s new Quebec lieutenant, but he is not expected to be at the ceremony because that is not an official role in cabinet.
Rodriguez announced this morning that he’s leaving cabinet and the federal Liberal caucus and will sit as an Independent member of Parliament until January.
That’s when the Quebec Liberal leadership race is set to officially begin.
Rodriguez says sitting as an Independent will allow him to focus on his own vision, but he plans to vote with the Liberals on a non-confidence motion next week.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has called an election for Oct. 21, signalling the beginning of a 33-day campaign expected to focus on pocketbook issues and the government’s provocative approach to gender identity policies.
The 70-year-old Progressive Conservative leader, who is seeking a third term in office, has attracted national attention by requiring teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred names and pronouns of young students.
More recently, however, the former Irving Oil executive has tried to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.
At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three and there was one Independent and four vacancies.
J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, said the top three issues facing New Brunswickers are affordability, health care and education.
“Across many jurisdictions, affordability is the top concern — cost of living, housing prices, things like that,” he said.
Richard Saillant, an economist and former vice-president of Université de Moncton, said the Tories’ pledge to lower the HST represents a costly promise.
“I don’t think there’s that much room for that,” he said. “I’m not entirely clear that they can do so without producing a greater deficit.” Saillant also pointed to mounting pressures to invest more in health care, education and housing, all of which are facing increasing demands from a growing population.
Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon. Both are focusing on economic and social issues.
Holt has promised to impose a rent cap and roll out a subsidized school food program. The Liberals also want to open at least 30 community health clinics over the next four years.
Coon has said a Green government would create an “electricity support program,” which would give families earning less than $70,000 annually about $25 per month to offset “unprecedented” rate increases.
Higgs first came to power in 2018, when the Tories formed the province’s first minority government in 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — the first province to go to the polls after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a majority.
Since then, several well-known cabinet ministers and caucus members have stepped down after clashing with Higgs, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on policies that represent a hard shift to the right side of the political spectrum.
Lewis said the Progressive Conservatives are in the “midst of reinvention.”
“It appears he’s shaping the party now, really in the mould of his world views,” Lewis said. “Even though (Progressive Conservatives) have been down in the polls, I still think that they’re very competitive.”
Meanwhile, the legislature remained divided along linguistic lines. The Tories dominate in English-speaking ridings in central and southern parts of the province, while the Liberals held most French-speaking ridings in the north.
The drama within the party began in October 2022 when the province’s outspoken education minister, Dominic Cardy, resigned from cabinet, saying he could no longer tolerate the premier’s leadership style. In his resignation letter, Cardy cited controversial plans to reform French-language education. The government eventually stepped back those plans.
A series of resignations followed last year when the Higgs government announced changes to Policy 713, which now requires students under 16 who are exploring their gender identity to get their parents’ consent before teachers can use their preferred first names or pronouns — a reversal of the previous practice.
When several Tory lawmakers voted with the opposition to call for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from his cabinet. And a bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
