In the picturesque hamlet of Brachay, in scorching late summer heat, Marine Le Pen was preaching to the politically converted. “Marine, président”, they chanted. “On va gagner” (we’re going to win). A banner stretching the length of one of the stone buildings overlooking the village square read: “Marine: Save France.”

Le Pen’s stump speech was the most closely watched and significant campaign launch of la rentrée, the national return to work after the long summer holidays, and the leader of France’s far-right Front National was welcomed like a conquering hero.

Le Pen has been largely absent from the political scene for several weeks and has refrained from adding her 10 cents’ worth to the raging polemic over the burkini and rows about security following deadly attacks by Islamic fundamentalists, both fertile ground for her party.

In the meantime, the country’s governing Socialists and centre-right opposition Les Républicains have engaged in what one FN heavyweight described with schadenfreude as a “bloodbath, left and right”.

The Parti Socialiste is bitterly split and in turmoil over whether François Hollande, with his calamitous popularity ratings will, or indeed should, stand for a second term. The alternative, to stand down, would be unprecedented for a serving leader. Emmanuel Macron, the finance minister who resigned last week, might be the rabbit that the party pulls out of the hat, but he is disliked by the PS’s leftwing, which is fielding its own candidates. In any case, Macron has not said whether he will even throw his hat into the presidential ring.

On the right, things are scarcely more harmonious. The deadline for Les Républicains candidates is Friday, and already former president Nicolas Sarkozy, mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppé and former prime minister François Fillon have either announced they are standing or are expected to do so.

Amid this political free-for-all, Le Pen is trying to throw off the party’s divisive reputation and market herself as a politician above and beyond the fray of the same-old-same-old French elite: a new, unifying, patriotic force who will break the shackles of Europe, end “mass immigration” and give France back to the French. Her slogan is La France apaisée – a soothed France.

Le Pen kept out of the controversy over banning burkinis on French beaches. Photograph: AP

She was, she said grandly from a hastily constructed stage in Brachay’s main square, speaking for “a forgotten France, a France abandoned by the self-appointed elite who either don’t see it or view it with a kind of condescension”.

“They describe places like Brachay as la France profonde [deepest France]. I prefer to think of it as deeply patriotic France,” she said to more cheers.

“The presidential campaign that is opening is unlike any other. The coming eight months will decide the fate of our nation, not just for the five years to come, but much longer. Maybe even for ever.”

Brachay mayor Gérard Marchand had likened Le Pen’s appeal for his villagers – all 61 of them – to the popularity of the Beatles and there was a similar element of hero worship.

Even by the standards of rural France, Brachay is a backwater. The road to the pretty hamlet, 200 miles south-east of Paris in the newly created Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine region – renamed the Grand Est – a few kilometres from Colombey-les-deux-Eglises, where General Charles de Gaulle is buried, winds through gently rolling farmland for as far as the eye can see. Brachayens, as they call themselves, boosted by party supporters, some of whom had been bussed in, cheered and clapped wildly and waved the tricolor as Le Pen spoke and they jostled bad-temperedly with the media. Her speech was punctuated by cries of “it’s true”, “you’re right”, “that’s why we need you”. Reporters on the other hand, seen as being party to a political elite hostile to the FN, were branded collabos (collaborators).

One exchange between FN supporters and the Observer set the tone: “What are you writing, is that Arabic?”

“No, shorthand.”

“It looks like Arabic. Anyway, all journalists write lies and propaganda.”

Le Pen said she was happy to be among rural French people with real concerns in the real France, far from the salons and sophistication, what Le Pen calls the “brouhaha” of Paris.

These are people, the FN leader refers to almost poetically, as “the forgotten French”. They may not remember the last time, if ever, they saw a migrant in their midst and nobody has ever turned up in Brachay wearing a burkini. The European Agricultural Fund for rural development allocated €202m for the period 2014-2020 to the region. But Le Pen pledges to wrest sovereignty back from Europe, like the “courageous British who, despite dire warnings, chose their destiny”.

Two Front National supporters wear T-shirts emblazoned with the first sentence of the French National anthem. Photograph: Francois Nascimbeni/AFP/Getty Images

Brachay may be small, but it perfectly encapsulates the FN’s target audience and has become a totem in the party’s campaign. In the first round of the last presidential election in 2012, Le Pen won her highest score, 72% of the votes – 31 out of the 43 votes cast. Back then, the PS and the UMP, predecessor of Les Républicains, failed to get a single Brachay vote.

Marchand admitted there was very little crime in his village, and no foreigners, but there were cases of severe poverty “mostly among those who work and who earn less than those who don’t and get benefits”, he said.

If locals were angry with the press, it was because journalists had “come here, taken pictures of them washing their socks in the sink” and assumed they were all know-nothing country bumpkins, he explained.

Opinion polls suggest Le Pen could win 28-29% in the first round of the presidential election next year. It seems likely that, unless the PS can come up with a stronger candidate than Hollande, who is scraping the bottom of the popularity barrel, Le Pen will be up against a centre-right opposition candidate, most likely Juppé or Sarkozy in the second round.

That Le Pen will be there seems hardly to be in doubt. All of the last 38 opinion polls carried out in France suggest she will be in the second round.

Jérôme Fourquet, director of the opinion pollsters Ifop, said Le Pen’s discretion after the summer terrorist attacks in Nice and near Rouen had played well with the public.

“She hasn’t needed to speak out because the news, from Brexit to the attacks and on to the row over the burkini … have worked in her favour. There was no point in her spoiling this momentum with even tougher proposals,” Fourquet told Les Echos last week.

In Brachay, like many other communities in la France profonde, Le Pen has already said more than enough to gain their unwavering support.