For years Marine Le Pen, National Rally's leader in parliament, has sought to “de-diabolise” or detoxify her party from the antisemitic and extremist roots of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his fellow founders of the National Front, which she renamed as National Rally.

Much of its focus now is on the cost-of-living crisis, but many of its strict anti-immigration policies remain and a ruling this year by the Council of State, France's highest court for administration, confirmed it could be considered “extreme right”.

France football captain Kylian Mbappé has warned his compatriots “the extremes are at the gates of power”, prompting Jordan Bardella, the president of RN, to hit back at multimillionaire sports figures "giving lessons to people struggling to make ends meet".

Bardella wants to ban French dual nationals from sensitive strategic posts, calling them "half-nationals". He also wants to limit social welfare for immigrants and get rid of the automatic right to French citizenship for children with foreign-born parents.

But a planned ban on wearing headscarves in public is for now not a priority.

Anti-Nato and anti-EU policies have also been softened and National Rally's close ties with Vladimir Putin's Russia have been quietly dropped.

Leaving the EU has not been on the agenda since 2022.

Instead, Bardella focuses on cutting VAT (sales tax) on energy and a list of 100 essential goods and repealing the Macron pension reforms in a matter of months.

(Source: BBC)