Philippe's strategy against Le Pen: brand her as a left-wing populist

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PARIS — Far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s surprise return to the 2027 French presidential election is forcing one of her main opponents, Edouard Philippe, to adjust his attack plans.

After launching his campaign in May by promising to sell voters on a “massively optimistic” conservative agenda , the former prime minister and his troops are now going after Le Pen as a fiscally irresponsible lefty.

“Marine Le Pen has a platform that is largely left-wing,” said Nathalie Loiseau, a member of the European Parliament campaigning for Philippe.

It’s not a new dig at Le Pen. Critics on the right have long accused her party, the National Rally, of economic incoherence, and Philippe himself slammed them as two-faced during a recent Paris rally. But now that Le Pen is the official candidate and not Jordan Bardella — her 30-year-old protégé who was seen as more palatable to conservative voters — Philippe and his team are betting their blows will land harder.

Le Pen’s embezzlement conviction and the five-year ban on standing for public office she was handed last year had thrust Bardella into the role of the National Rally’s presumptive candidate. In that role, he tried to broaden the far right’s appeal by exploring more pro-business, fiscally conservative policies.

But Le Pen’s first appeal concluded with a bombshell legal reprieve on Tuesday that allows her to run for president, meaning her vision of an interventionist welfare state will be the one that wins out in the party’s platform.

The National Rally did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Philippe and his allies believe Le Pen will be a tougher candidate to beat than Bardella, but they appear confident in their ability to pick apart her policies.

“Le Pen and Bardella both had their strengths and weaknesses,” said pro-Philippe parliamentarian Frédéric Valletoux. “Le Pen is more experienced and likely a tougher opponent, but her platform makes no sense in quite a few respects.”

Comparatively, Bardella’s apparent ideological flexibility on matters of economic policy made him a threat to win over fiscally conservative voters from Philippe and other right-wing candidates.

A case in point is the two far-right leaders’ dueling positions on the contentious issue of retirement reform.

Le Pen officially supports lowering France’s minimum retirement age back to 62, reversing President Emmanuel Macron’s contentious 2023 reform, which set out a gradual increase to 64. Bardella, however, had opened the door to changing his party’s position over concerns about the state of France’s public finances, with debt projected to rise from 115.5 percent of economic output to 203 percent by 2050, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) .

Now that Bardella is out of the race, Philippe’s party, Horizons, intends to hit Le Pen “on the inconsistency and absurdity of a highly statist platform that seeks to roll back pension reforms and make people believe they can work less,” said Valletoux.

Philippe, on the other hand, has floated the possibility of raising the retirement age even higher than Macron’s reform envisaged. While that measure is unlikely to be popular with the general public, it could appeal to the type of voters Bardella had been trying to win over.

“A right-wing voter who values free enterprise and a form of fiscal and budgetary prudence will be less inclined to vote for Marine Le Pen [than for Bardella]. Edouard Philippe may win them over,” said Gilles Boyer, Philippe’s co-campaign director.

Marion Solletty and Giorgio Leali contributed to this report.