Le Pen Launches Presidential Bid in Orleans, Promising a French 'Renaissance'

Marine Le Pen opened her presidential campaign on Sunday in Orleans, central France, telling thousands of supporters she would lead a French "renaissance" as the country faced crisis. Organisers said 8,500 people filled a venue that had been transformed into a fort for the occasion, and the crowd chanted "Marine présidente!" while waving French flags.

Leading in the polls, with candidates from the right, left and centre trailing her, Le Pen cast the election as a historic chance to restore national glory. "This is a story to be written, a destiny to be fulfilled," she said. She also promised to bring back authority and security in a country she described as having lost control, and pledged to "re-establish the rule of law."

The launch came during a wave of protests that began in mid-September, sparked by high school students in a Paris suburb and later growing into a nationwide movement fed by broad discontent. On October 17, shops were looted and ransacked and more than 2,000 people were arrested as hundreds of thousands marched in French cities. A similar but smaller pattern followed the next weekend, and calls for more demonstrations are already circulating.

The unrest has let Le Pen's National Rally (RN) present itself as the guarantor of law and order. The party has used it to criticise President Emmanuel Macron over public security, while Le Pen has also accused far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, a contender in the coming elections, of encouraging violence. One supporter, a 56-year-old who gave her name as Nadede and began voting RN in 2024, said she believed her country was "drifting off course" and that Le Pen was the only person able to set it right.

Security around the event was heavy. Police checks started at departure stations in Paris, and officers in full gear walked through trains. Orleans was close to a standstill, with businesses shut and public transport suspended. About 3,000 police officers had been deployed the day before as anti-RN protesters, who call the party xenophobic and racist, gathered in the city.

The choice of Orleans was symbolic. The city is bound up with Joan of Arc, the 15th-century heroine who helped lift the English siege in 1429. The far right has long claimed her as an emblem of national pride, and Le Pen has drawn parallels between Joan's mission and her own ambitions.

The crowd showed how far the party has widened its appeal, from young urban residents to middle-class workers who once backed the centrist party. Its growth owes much to dédiabolisation, a strategy developed over two decades to temper its rhetoric and distance it from positions that made it toxic to many voters. Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was convicted of hate speech and expelled from the party in 2015. Membership has nearly tripled, to about 112,000 paying members from fewer than 37,000 in 2022.

Le Pen combines restrictive immigration policies with promises of social protection, and has won ground in working-class areas once tied to the left. The party has dropped ideas such as leaving the Eurozone, but she has pledged a referendum on the primacy of EU law over migration policy and an annual 11-billion-euro ($12.3bn) cut in France's contribution to the bloc. Historian and analyst Baptiste Roger-Lacan said the programme "is still fraught with fiscal absurdity" and that the party's diplomatic agenda remains pro-Russian and anti-EU.

Jordan Bardella, 31, Le Pen's second-in-command, also addressed the event. In September, Mediapart published allegations that he had expressed anti-Semitic views in private messages from his teenage years, which he denied, announcing legal action against the journalists. He has also reportedly differed with Le Pen on economic policy and on making her proposed ban on the Islamic headscarf in public spaces a central issue. Any such tension stayed out of view in Orleans, where the slogan "Marine president, a Bardella government" projected unity.