She may have lost the presidential election but far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s supporters say her march will continue because Macron will struggle

Marine Le Pen may have lost the election, but her supporters cheered the Front National candidate as if she was on her way to the Elysée palace.

As it became clear Le Pen had lost, party workers and activists at the Chalet du Lac in the Bois de Vincennes, launched into a chorus of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise. When Le Pen took the stage, her tricolore-waving fans cheered her to the rafters.

In a defiant speech, the far-right leader declared the Front National was now France’s main opposition movement. She urged the party to renew itself “to rise to the historic opportunity and meet the French people’s expectations. I will propose to start this deep transformation of our movement in order to make a new political force”.

Macron wins French presidency by decisive margin over Le Pen Read more

What Le Pen’s promised transformation meant was not immediately clear, but that did not matter to the crowd, who cheered “Merci Marine” as she left the stage.

Many insisted this was no defeat. “Disappointed? Why should I be disappointed,” said one supporter, a lawyer who had travelled from Hyères in the south of France, and declined to give his name. “We are advancing. French people are angry because there are no competent people [in charge] and will continue to be angry.”

Irene Geay, who works in tourism sector, clutched a blue rose, Le Pen’s symbol, as she predicted newly elected president Emmanuel Macron would fail. “In one or two months’ time there will be a million people on the streets, because the people who have voted for him are the extreme left. They have not voted for him because they believe in his programme … so he will be defeated.”

Stéphane Ravier, a Front National senator from Marseille, said it was too early to say what Le Pen’s promised transformation would mean, although he expected it would not happen until after the legislative elections in June. Le Pen’s projected 11m votes, twice her father’s score, was a historic record, he said. “It is not victory, but it is a victory.”



The Le Pen team chose a smart brasserie, which was a former hunting lodge for Napoleon III, for their party. Located in the Vincennes wood in eastern Paris, the bucolic scene is far from the grandeur of the Place de l’Opéra in central Paris where her father made fiery speeches every year on May Day.

It was a party to showcase the modern Front National, rebranded by Marine, away from Jean-Marie Le Pen’s more obvious hardline, antisemitic rhetoric. Well-heeled professionals wore discreet blue rose pins, while tables were decorated with fake blue roses. Only a few people sported the older FN flame pin.

Florian Philippot, a senior FN figure, suggested to French media that the party would soon be renamed.

Patricia, a 57-year old civil servant, who had supported the party for 20 years, was a convinced fan of Marine, as opposed to Le Pen senior. “She is modern, she is up to date. He comes from the past, from the time of Algeria,” she said, referring to Algeria’s war for independence that ended in 1962 and still reverberates through French politics.

“It is not a defeat if she is not elected because she is supported by a good number of people; many more people have voted for the party in successive elections.”



Among the FN crowd was a guest from Breitbart News, the rightwing website that supports Donald Trump. Dressed in a grey three-piece suit, the man – who spoke with a British accent – said he had flown in from Canada to attend the event as guest and to report it for Breitbart’s liveblog.

He declined to give his name. “We generally don’t talk to the press. It is just not our policy.” Asked about this unusual policy for a news organisation, he went back to studying his phone. “We just don’t.”



Libération reported that more than half a dozen media outlets were denied entry to the FN party on the grounds of lack of space, including the investigative site Mediapart, Charlie Hebdo and Buzzfeed. But, despite the party’s claim there were not enough places, the press room was never more than half full.

Le Pen cast her ballot in Hénin-Beaumont, a small town in northern France where voters have deserted the Socialists to make the Front National the dominant political force. Smiling broadly for the cameras, she arrived at the polling station with local mayor Steeve Briois, who took over as the FN’s leader during the presidential election campaign.



Shortly before she arrived, five topless activists from the feminist group Femen climbed scaffolding on a church and unfurled a banner reading: “Power for Marine, despair for Marianne,” a reference to the revolutionary symbol of France.



There was no repeat protest on election night. Security was tight: the sprawling park was locked down for the evening, with a dozen police vans guarding the entrance.

Shortly before the results were announced, Le Pen’s closest aide Jordan Bardella, a member of her campaign team and regional councillor for d’Île-de-France, said it was an important and historic result. “There has been a massive movement supporting Le Pen and some of the people who voted for Macron just voted by default … Marine Le Pen now represents the main opposition, the patriotic bloc.”



Some FN figures have been less complimentary in private, including some sniping about her performance in a head-to-head TV debate with Macron.

French media declared Macron the winner of that encounter, where Le Pen lashed out at the cold-eyed “smirking banker”, using aggression as a substitute for discussing policy details.

“Marine did not convince the undecided,” one anonymous Front National MEP told Le Monde. Another party insider was blunter, describing her performance as a “catastrophe” that “was not worthy of a presidential debate, adding “Macron gave the impression that he had a project … Marine apart from the basics, was frankly not on top form”.

Party insiders were left despairing that her 2016 slogan – “A Soothed France” – “La France apaisėe”, accompanied with the careful release of “private” photos of Le Pen cradling kittens – was torn up in one night.

But that mood was far away on Sunday night. Dominic Leliliet, a 57-year old small businessman, said he was celebrating “the victory of the ideas”. He added: “Macron must take these into account, [the ideas of] the patriots”.