As Macron tries to become the first French president in 20 years to serve a second term, he is often reminded of his winning speech in front of the Louvre in 2017, where, after defeating Le Pen with 66% of the vote, he promised to secure the people “no longer had a reason to vote for the extremists”. Polls suggest he could advance to the second round against Le Pen after Sunday’s vote and narrowly narrow the gap to him in the final round on April 24, with a Harris poll this week giving Macron the lead. at 51.5% against Le Pen. 48.5%. Le Pen has been steadily rising in opinion polls in recent days, bolstered by its promises to cut VAT on fuel in response to the cost-of-living crisis. Her political opponents continued to warn that her anti-immigrant plan to prioritize indigenous French over non-French for housing, work and benefits and to ban the Muslim headscarf in all public places was xenophobic, racist and anti-French. In a front-page interview with Le Figaro on Thursday, Macron was asked if he bore some responsibility for the far-right support for the far right in opinion polls. Macron said he believed his government had “succeeded in attacking” some far-right voters by reducing unemployment, creating jobs and starting a process where factories opened after many years of deindustrialisation. “But when you lead, govern or are president, you always have a part of the responsibility,” he added. “In terms of immigration, the results are insufficient, but we have strengthened border protection and tightened the conditions for entry into our territory in a context where the flow has increased significantly… due to the international context.” Macron said there were more arrivals in France between 2017 and 2019 than in the previous two years. “A concern arose from it: I could not calm it down and it fed the extremities.” But he added that France was not “sunk” by immigration. He said if he won a second term, he would “step up the fight against illegal immigration” and facilitate the deployment of people who had not been approved to stay. Macron said the far right in France was still “fundamentally” the same: it attacked the Republic, it had a base of anti-Semitism, “very clear xenophobia and super-conservative goals”. Support for the far right in the first round of polls is at an all-time high: Le Pen and far-right rival Eric Zemour, a former talk show expert, have more than 30% support for each other. Polls show Macron in first place for the first round with a percentage of about 26.5%. Lepen has risen to 23% in recent days. Hard-core left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in third place with about 17% and also rising. A large number of undecided voters and a potentially high turnout mean that the result of Sunday’s first round remains open. Macron said Melanson’s hard-line movement does not belong to the same category as the far right, but brought “simplistic arguments and fears that cultivate fears” in the same way. Asked in another newspaper interview why he had not restrained the tide of the far right, Macron said: “The extremes are fed by fears and there are fears: climate, geopolitics, pandemic… I tried to get answers. “But when there are fears and big changes, the scapegoat strategy works much better.” Macron vows to use a second term to further cut taxes, bring France into full employment after decades of mass unemployment and raise the retirement age to 65. He said inflation in France was half Britain’s pace , because the government had taken effective measures to curb rising electricity prices and provided anti-inflation payments to low-income households. Le Pen on Thursday ousted financial market concerns about its rise in opinion polls. France’s borrowing costs are rising as investors get upset in a tighter-than-expected match. “The policies I want to implement are not for the stock market, which will be a change from Emanuel Macron,” he told RTL radio. Lepen said if elected he would ban the Muslim headscarf in all public places, including the street. He said it would be imposed by the police in the same way as the use of seat belts in cars. “People will be fined in the same way that it is illegal not to wear your belt. “It seems to me that the police are very capable of enforcing this measure,” he said. Le Pen said the government’s tactic of ruining its possible election no longer works. “Terrorism means that if Emanuel Macron is not re-elected it will be a crisis, the sun will go down, the sea will disappear and we will suffer a frog invasion no longer works.”
