Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right candidate to succeed President Emmanuel Macron next year, vowed in her first campaign speech on Sunday to “restore the rule of law” if elected next year.
Le Pen – the front runner in the polls – seems to be benefiting from the convulsions France has been going through for weeks, punctuated by mass cost-of-living rallies and some violent clashes on Saturday and the previous week.
“We are going to restore the rule of law,” she said, after looting and arson on the sidelines of demonstrations last weekend.
She was addressing 8,500 supporters of her nationalist, anti-immigration party in the city of Orleans, where Joan of Arc – revered by the far-right as a symbol of national resistance – lifted an English siege in 1429.