Marine Le Pen did the impossible.
On Sunday evening, she regained the banner of the leader of all the French right, which seemed to float away from her to the leader of the Reconquista party, Eric Zemmour.
Her National Rally party became the third in terms of the number of seats in the country's parliament, and in fact - the winner, since the first and second places were not parties, but party coalitions - Macron's centrist alliance "Together!"
(245 seats) and a variegated red-green coalition Nupes (New People's Ecological and Social Union) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the Unbowed France party (131 seats).
And the party of Marine Le Pen unexpectedly - even for herself - alone, without any allies, won 89 seats.
“This is an unheard of victory that even the most optimistic leaders of the National Rally did not dare to hope for,” writes Le Figaro.
Moreover, this is an event that refutes all the laws that govern the functioning of the Fifth Republic.
Since the founding of the National Front party in 1972, the brainchild of former paratrooper Jean-Marie Le Pen - Marine's father - has been a favorite target for attacks from the left, the centrists, and even the moderate right.
Supporters of the NF were branded "fascists", which in France, with its strong leftist tradition, is tantamount to a death sentence in politics.
The tough thugs with whom Jean-Marie Le Pen created his party were partly to blame for this - they called themselves "national revolutionaries" and preferred the tactics of "direct action" to parliamentary debates - admonishing ideological opponents with iron bars and clubs.
And although Le Pen, the elder, got rid of them rather quickly, the idea of his party as a bunch of fascists, racists and xenophobes was firmly rooted in the public opinion of the Fifth Republic.
Confess in polite society
Meanwhile, the ideas of the "National Front" were shared by many voters, especially those who belonged to the "deep people" - peasants, hard workers, small businessmen.
They voted year after year for candidates from the Le Pen party... but it didn't lead to anything.
The political system of France developed a very effective "protective mechanism" that did not allow the Lepenists to be elected to legislative assemblies and executive bodies - it was called the "Republican Front".
It was applied in those cases when in the second round of voting candidates of the right, left and NF gained an approximately equal number of votes.
In such cases, under the motto "We will not let the Nazis into power!"
a politician who had minimal chances of winning voluntarily withdrew his candidacy in order to exclude competition between two “acceptable” rivals and prevent the “unacceptable” one from winning, i.e.
The system worked like clockwork: both the left and the right, and the centrists merged into one impenetrable cohort, against which all the efforts of the National Front were shattered.
It failed only once, in 1986, when, at the initiative of François Mitterrand, elections - the only time in the history of the Fifth Republic - were held not according to the majoritarian system in two rounds, but according to the proportional system in one round.
The impossibility of organizing a "republican front" immediately affected the results of Le Pen's party - as many as 35 delegates entered the national assembly.
No more such "experiments" were made in France.
Marine Le Pen, who succeeded her father as party leader, did everything possible to wipe the dried blood and dirt of the 1970s from the clothes of the National Front, expel old demons from the party, give it gloss and respectability.
In 2017, Marin showed excellent results in the presidential elections, losing less than 3% of the vote to Emmanuel Macron in the first round.
But then the "republican front" worked - and in the second round the gap was already 32%.
And in the elections to the national assembly that took place a month later, she managed to get only eight of her party members into parliament.
After that, Marin rebranded her father's legacy, changing the stigmatized name "National Front" to a less militant, but also not causing unwanted associations - the National Association.
The current electoral cycle has brought Marine Le Pen much more significant trophies.
However, she lost the presidential election again, but with a much less devastating score (41.5% versus 58.5% for Macron).
On the other hand, it managed to increase the representation in the National Assembly no less than 11 times - from eight to 89 deputies.
The main factor that ensured the incredible result of the National Association was the end of the "republican front".
Marine Le Pen's candidates won more than half of the 108 campaigns across the country in the second round.
Moreover, they won against both the leftists and the macronists from the centrist coalition “Together!”.
One of the losers in this confrontation was the Minister of Health Brigitte Bourguignon herself, whom the voters preferred the candidate from the National Association Christine Angrand.
The president's supporters could not come to an agreement with the left, as was usually the case.
“Yesterday, the ‘republican front’ died at the local level,” said Mathieu Gallard of the French sociological service Ipsos.
Le Pen's party has made significant gains among young millennial voters and has also won working-class votes.
This threatens to "potentially collapse the so-called centrist consensus promoted by globalist elites such as the former Rothschild banker Macron," writes American conservative mouthpiece Breitbart.
Between the first and second rounds of voting, polls gave Le Pen's party between 25 and 45 seats, suggesting that it was anti-Macron sentiment in French society that would force many left-wing voters to side with Marine in order to deprive the demigod-playing president of control of parliament.
Sunday's vote showed pollsters underestimated the degree of irritation Macron evokes in both right-wing and left-wing voters.
Before the elections, Marin herself hoped to get at least 15 seats in the national assembly: this would allow her to form a parliamentary group.
But instead of 15, she won 89 seats, giving her movement "more access to the levers of French government than at any time in history."
Indeed, with 89 seats in parliament, the National Association can initiate a vote of no confidence in the government - and the current government is extremely unpopular, and both right and left are calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Elizabeth Bourne.
Having 60 deputies, the parliamentary group gets the right to send the already adopted bill, with which it does not agree, to the Constitutional Court, where it can be recognized as contrary to the Constitution of the country.
In other words, Le Pen's party has real tools to influence the country's politics.
In addition, Marine Le Pen hit the real jackpot on Sunday night.
According to the laws of the Fifth Republic, parties that have formed parliamentary groups are allocated very decent money from the budget - about €10 million a year.
Until 2027, the National Rally will receive more than €50 million, and this is more than relevant for the party, whose official debt was about €24 million at the end of 2020 - not a single French bank agreed to finance the election campaigns of the far right.
Le Pen herself, stunned by the unexpected success of her party, apparently has Napoleonic plans.
“We will demand everything we have the right to: the positions of vice-president of the national assembly and chairman of the financial commission!”
she said.
The French left reacted painfully.
“She was given more legitimacy not only by political parties, but also by the media,” said Rim-Sarah Allouan, a political scientist from Toulouse, commented with displeasure on Le Pen’s triumph.
“There are some media outlets that don’t even call her far-right!”
Meanwhile, Marin decided on an unexpected, but potentially very powerful move.
She announced to journalists that she intends to give up her post as chairman of the National Rally party in order to lead a powerful new parliamentary bloc.
This will allow her to fully focus on the parliamentary struggle and fight her old rival Macron.
“I am very pleased to gather many of our MPs tonight, first of all to congratulate them on their victory,” Marine Le Pen wrote on her Twitter on Monday, when the final results of the elections became known.
“But also in order to prepare for our arrival at the Palace of Bourbon, where we will enter as the first force of opposition to Emmanuel Macron.”
This is a strong statement - given the fact that the second place is still not with her party, but with Jean-Luc Mélenchon's red-green coalition Nupes.
And Melenchon not only publicly announced that one of his main tasks was to prevent the victory of the “far-right”, but also seriously intended to compete for the post of prime minister.
Marin herself criticizes Melenchon with no less fury than he criticizes her.
“Mélenchon did not get even half of the number of deputies necessary in order to qualify for the post of prime minister.
He lied to voters and this was also sanctioned,” she wrote.
But Mélenchon, just like Le Pen, seeks to defeat Macron, and on this basis, two irreconcilable opponents can become situational allies.
BBC Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield likened Mélenchon's broad alliance of left-wing parties and Marine Le Pen's Rally Nationale to two halves of ticks between which Macron's centrist government was caught.
Yes, they are at different poles of the political spectrum, but no one has canceled the rule “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”!
The only person who lost in this big game was the one who is considered even more right-wing than Marine Le Pen - Eric Zemmour, leader of the Reconquista party.
A supporter of a "privileged alliance" with Russia, Zemmour is indeed in many ways more radical than the cautious and compromising Marin.
Today, he is perhaps the only French politician who bravely fights against the Great Replacement, as the globalists' policy of destroying French identity is called.
It would seem that his position should be close and understandable to Marine Le Pen.
But the leader of the National Association saw in Zemmura not an ally, but a rival.
In the 4th arrondissement of the Var department, the unheard of happened: Le Pen's party and the Macronists united in ... a "republican front" in order to prevent Zemmour from winning.
As a result, Zemmour received only third place... and did not get into the National Assembly.
Isn't this the secret of the unprecedented success of Le Pen's party in these elections?
The “National Front”, which has been trimmed and even changed its odious name, no longer threatens the shadow owners of the Fifth Republic - now it is even beneficial to use it as a weapon against real right-wingers like Zemmur.
And if so, then Marine Le Pen's party can be allowed into the national assembly - it's not scary!
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.