Meeting Marine Le Pen

The Front National leader is keen to sound off on the EU, immigration and capitalism – but not on her party’s Vichy links

There’s no mistaking the Front National’s headquarters in the western Parisian suburb of Nanterre. Outside the entrance stands a martial statue of a Joan of Arc in full body armour. Inside there is a garish, gigantic plastic coq gaulois. Further inside sits the party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, a handsome 42-year-old blonde in heels, tailored jeans, frilly blouse and no make-up. Bob Tyrrell, editor-in-chief of the American Spectator, and I have been granted what is (for foreign media) a rare audience with the most forceful new character in French politics.

It is impossible to dismiss Le Pen or her party as a fringe force in French politics. Since being elected party leader eight months ago, she has been nothing short of a phenomenon. She is a smash hit in the television studios and narrowly trails Nicolas Sarkozy in the opinion polls ahead of next year’s presidential elections. She puts her lawyer’s training to use when laying out her ­party’s agenda for a stronger state, law and order, nationalistic protectionism and social welfare. Her party is known best for its policies on immigration, but since becoming leader she has been keen to broaden the FN agenda. When we meet, the conversation starts with Brussels.

‘The EU has become the Soviet Union of Europe,’ she says, matter-of-factly. ‘It was created without the consent of the people, and often against the people. It crushes us with rules, regulations and norms, while suffocating our economies with the straitjacket of the euro.’ And the euro itself? ‘Collapsing now, before our very eyes,’ she says. ‘And when it goes, the EU in its present form will disappear along with it.