PARIS — He was her right-hand man, her geek, her answers guy, ready with emailed talking points at all hours of the day and night — in addition to being a friend.

But now Florian Philippot, who stepped down Thursday as the National Front's vice president, is out of the picture.

And National Front leader Marine Le Pen has to figure out how her far-right party can adapt to a radically changed political environment without his brain to rely on.

It won't be easy. Le Pen was never a political theorist. Philippot provided her, wholesale, with the intellectual framework of her anti-EU agenda and taught her how to use it.

Now that he's gone, Le Pen needs to reassert her battered authority over divided and restive troops after Philippot's blatant defiance of her leadership.

She also needs to find a new formula that will help the Front avoid extinction in its next two major political battles: municipal and European Parliament elections in 2019, which party troops now see as a historic showdown with Macron's pro-European form of liberalism. As far as they are concerned, 2019 should be payback time for Le Pen's heavy loss to Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election this year.

What to expect? Most likely, an abrupt lurch back to traditional National Front messages: anti-immigration, hard-line on law and order, and strong on French cultural identity — with much less emphasis on EU-bashing.

But there will be plenty of twists along the way. Based on talks with some of Le Pen's senior lieutenants, here's a roadmap of priorities over the next few months for Europe's pre-eminent far-right politician.

First things first: banish Philippot's name, airbrush his likeness from official portraits, smash any statues devoted to him. In the tradition of the Soviet Union's Communist Party, the National Front immediately got to work dismantling Philippot's legacy after he left. "He's a conceptual guy. He doesn't go into the field. He lacks human empathy, and that crucial political substance: a feeling for people," said Jean Messiha, a senior party member and campaign strategist. "He had a fixation on the economic question. He considered that everything had to start with an exit from the eurozone."

Another senior aide, former conservative MP Jérôme Rivière, called Philippot's decision to leave "childish and capricious."

"During the legislative elections, he hijacked the party's message for himself, making it all about the euro," said Rivière. "He doesn't let up. Then he founded his own group, in a sort of childish tantrum. I've been in politics a long time and I never saw anything like that."

With Philippot's legacy rubbed from the history books, Le Pen can start re-establishing her authority over the party in earnest. After her defeat, Philippot was quoted as saying that Le Pen was "burned" — although he denied having said it. A party ally, Robert Ménard, called for her to step down from the National Front's presidency. Now Le Pen needs to stamp out such talk, or see strong-willed lieutenants like Gilbert Collard steamroll over her.

"It's true that through this crisis, she's been weakened, she is diminished. Her leadership is contested. Can she get over it is a fair question. But it's also a chance for her to show what she's made of, to reveal the leader inside of her, to appear as totally rid of this very close relationship and learn how to manage the various currents inside the party," said Messiha.

Once Le Pen has dealt with the direct challenges to her authority, it will be onto the question of just what her party is now proposing to the French people. Clearly, the euro issue will be downgraded as a priority. "When you look at what's happening with Brexit, where the U.K. people voted and are now going to take years before they actually get out, we need to be realistic. We should not be telling the French people that we can leave immediately. It's not a priority. What we will propose is control over our borders and a new relationship with the European Union," said Rivière.

Edouard Ferrand, an MEP, went further on the EU. "We are not an anti-EU party. There are a lot of things to keep about the EU. So we will propose an alternative relationship with the European Union," he said. Meanwhile, the Front will drill down on the two topics it sees Macron as neglecting: immigration and identity. "We'll have a political line that's adapted to the situation of France today. We need to adapt to the circumstances today. If you ask the French what are the main challenges facing the country, they tell you: immigration, Islamism, burkinis. You can make a program out of this question," said Messiha.

Le Pen will turn to the next big challenges for her party: the municipal and European elections of 2019.

Le Pen will also have to decide whether she maintains the National Front in its isolation, or tries to strike an alliance with another right-wing force. On Friday, Le Pen said she was ready to talk with Laurent Wauquiez, the conservative hard-liner who's almost certain to become the next president of the conservative Républicains party in December. "Of course," she said on BFMTV, when asked if she would speak to Wauquiez, who has so far refused to strike any deal with the Front. "But he doesn't want to."

"I've always been for an alliance of the right," former conservative MP Rivière said: "This is already happening at the local level, even if Wauquiez is stuck in his attitude of refusal. If he is honest, he will ask the party members if they want to have an exchange with the National Front, and respect their decision."

Meanwhile, Le Pen and Philippot are competing for the affection of nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who joined Le Pen's campaign between the two rounds of the presidential election, only to break off their alliance weeks later. Both Le Pen and Philippot met Dupont-Aignan over the past 10 days. "Dupont-Aignan is a courageous person," said Rivière. "He's already well on his way to accepting a reconfiguration of the right. But it's not going to happen overnight."

Then, Le Pen will turn to the next big challenges for her party: the municipal and European elections of 2019. Here, Ferrand said that the Front was preparing a major offensive against Macron's liberal vision that would come complete with a "positive proposal" for European reform.

"Macron wants to reform the European Union, and is looking for a coalition. But he's totally narcissistic on this question. He's not finding any support for his proposals elsewhere in Europe. He's basically there to save [European Commission President Jean-Claude] Juncker from collapse," said Ferrand. "What we will put forward is a project that does not oppose the EU, but offers to reform it. For France, we think that Spain is a much more interesting economic model to follow than Germany."

Finally, there is the question of how to treat Philippot and his allies, who are ready to launch a group called the Patriots, likely to compete with the Front for votes. "The idea for now is to have a discussion group, a place where we can organize for the future. We are going to regroup, propose a political project for the French people. Everything is open," said Philippe Murer, Le Pen's former economic adviser who left to join Philippot in his new organization.