Marine Le Pen needed encouragement after the collapse of the National Regrouping (RN) in the regional elections in June.
And the militants and delegates of the far-right party, meeting this weekend at a congress in the Catalan-French city of Perpignan, also needed an injection of optimism.
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Marine Le Pen's Last Battle
Le Pen's far right is defeated by the French regionals
The head of RN was re-elected almost unanimously in the position she has held for a decade.
And she was automatically proclaimed a candidate for the presidency of France in the spring of 2022 in which she aspires to fight with the current president of the Republic, the centrist Emmanuel Macron.
That of 2022 will be Le Pen's third presidential candidacy.
It is possible that she shows the wear: hers, after repeated losing campaigns, and that of the French, who for the most part view her with antipathy and distrust her competence to lead an atomic power.
Lepenists like to remember the antecedent of the socialist François Mitterrand, who tried three times to be president and did not succeed until the third.
In 2012 the head of RN, the former National Front, did not qualify for the second round.
In 2017 yes and lost.
Macron got 66% of the vote;
Le Pen, 34%.
Next year, if both are the finalists again, the distance will be less, according to the polls.
In a 40-minute speech in Perpignan, Le Pen reaffirmed the strategy consisting of smoothing the most radical tones of the message and shaking off the image of a racist, authoritarian party, contrary to republican principles and dangerous for France.
After the failure in the regionals, there are doubts about whether it has gone too far in this strategy and has ended up being confused with the traditional right.
"There is no going back," Le Pen warned.
"With all the respect we have for our history, we will not return to the National Front," he added, before charging those who, in his field, "are attracted by excesses, bellicose attitudes, youth provocations."
Le Pen claimed that his ideas on immigration, globalization, secularism, Islamism, the role of the State in the economy, or the France of the small cities and towns forgotten by Paris today "are almost unanimously shared."
"We have to go to the next stage," he added.
"This ideological victory must be transformed into an electoral victory, into a political victory."
Acting President of RN
There was no suspense about the reelection of Le Pen, the only candidate, as president: she won with 98.3% of the vote.
The only unknown was who will be the interim president when Le Pen leaves office in September to run for the presidency as a candidate from France and not from a party.
La Pen chose as his successor 25-year-old MEP Jordan Bardella, a child prodigy of the French extreme right.
His poor results in the regionals, where he was a candidate in Île-de-France, the Paris region, were not an obstacle to his appointment or to his being the candidate with the most votes in the election of the National Council - the party's parliament. .
The other candidate was Louis Aliot, Le Pen's ex-partner and host of the congress, since he has been mayor of Perpignan since 2020.
It is the most populated city in the hands of the RN and the showcase of the effort to turn it into a respectable party, or at least a party that arouses indifference and not fear.
The atmosphere at the Perpignan congress was not that of a party preparing to seize power for the first time after half a century of existence.
There is frustration among a part of the militancy.
Deborah Gazel, Cyriane Chiorino and Chantal Alex are RN activists, the first from Toulouse and the other two from the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.
They have experienced firsthand the failure in the June elections.
All three were candidates in the regional or departmental elections in their territories;
all three lost, and blame the defeat on the union of the rest of the parties against the extreme right and abstention.
Like many rank-and-file militants, they support Le Pen in his attempt to modernize the party, but they also do not want to renounce the essences.
"You have to adapt, the world has evolved," said Chiorino during a break in the congress.
"I think [Le Pen] should keep the foundation firm," says Gazel.
"Personally, I think it should toughen up a bit," completes Alex.
In the speech, Le Pen was severe with the potential rebels of RN when warning them that the party will not return to the past, and appealed to the civic responsibility of the apathetic and abstentionists who contributed to the defeat in the regionals.
Strong hand against immigration
But it also gave his audience what they expected.
Strong hand on immigration and the promise of a referendum on this issue as soon as it reaches the Elysee Palace.
Also the tremendousness, the brand of the house: France, he indicated, runs the risk of "fading" or "sinking."
And a nationalism without complexes in the face of the threats to France that, in his opinion, represent globalization and Islamism: "Sovereignty is to nations what freedom is to men."
Although Le Pen has parked his proposals to leave the EU and the euro, in Perpignan he defended a Europe of sovereign nations in alliance with Viktor Orbán's Hungary, Jaroslaw Kaczynsky's Poland and other friends like Vox in Spain.
RN is a game directed with an iron fist in which whoever moves from the line is expelled.
The questioning of Marine Le Pen has come from outside voices.
One of these voices is Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front and set apart by his daughter.
Le Pen Sr. advised "a return of manhood, of clarity of positions."
Another critical voice is Éric Zemmour, a popular television commentator, author of best-selling essays on the history and identity of France and a likely presidential candidate with a candidacy to the right of RN.
On the CNEWS television network, where he is the star of the talk, Zemmour stated: "She has decided to re-focus in the name of the strategy of de-
demonization
, when, on the contrary, there is a radicalization, a hardening of the voters."
On the eve of the congress, Aliot, the mayor of Perpignan, replied to the critics: "I think that more radicalism means stepping into a corner and becoming an antiquated and old-fashioned party."