Marine Le Pen is hoping to build on a year of momentous electoral victories to establish her National Front as France’s pre-eminent political force – a battle some say the far-right party has already won.
National Front party members gathered in Lyon on Saturday for the start of their two-day party conference.
France's third-largest city, Lyon is also a left-wing bastion with a proud record of resistance to fascism during World War II.
Its choice underscores the party's all-conquering confidence ahead of next year's regional polls.
The weekend gathering caps a triumphant year for the National Front, which captured a dozen towns in municipal elections, romped to victory in European elections with a whopping 25% of the vote, and seized its first ever seats in the Senate.
Should France hold a presidential election next week, polls say Marine Le Pen would thrash her challengers in a first round of voting – but would likely come up short in a runoff vote.
Either way, analysts say there is a very real chance the FN, as it is known in France, may one day wield power in France.
Some have argued that Le Pen won’t even need to clinch the presidency for her party to claim some sort of ideological victory.
Earlier this week, she appeared as one of five French nationals – and the only French politician – in Foreign Policy’s list of the 100 most influential figures of 2014.
The respected weekly said Le Pen had become “something of a standard-bearer for Europe’s pro-White, Eurosceptical forces – a model for how they, too, can become serious political contenders.”
Setting the agenda
Even after its recent electoral successes, Le Pen's party still only controls a fraction of the country's town halls and parliamentary seats.
And yet its favourite topics – Euroscepticism, reaffirming French sovereignty, drastically curbing immigration – largely dominate the political debate.
“The FN has long won the ideological battle – at least in part,” says Sylvain Crépon, a sociologist and expert on the French patriotic pro-White.
According to Crépon, France's deeply unpopular mainstream parties position themselves according to a political agenda dictated in large part by the FN.
The conservative UMP party, in particular, is routinely accused of pandering to the patriotic pro-White by adopting an ever tougher stance on immigration.
“But many among the ruling Socialists have also embraced the discourse on ‘French identity’ and hardline security,” says Crépon.
Nonna Mayer, a researcher at Sciences-Po Paris and author of numerous publications on the FN vote, says it is too soon to speak of an ideological victory for the FN.
“But, it is undeniable that the other parties are running after the [patriotic pro-White],” she says.
Mayer believes the UMP's Nicolas Sarkozy has done most to legitimise FN ideas on immigration and the supposed threat to French identity, leading to “ever more porosity between the two parties' electorates”.
The former French president also appears to have embraced the FN’s Euroscepticism, at least in part.
Once a champion of European integration, he now proposes to suppress EU powers and overhaul the Schengen agreement, which allows people to move freely between member states.
Meanwhile, the left has been unable to articulate an alternative discourse, paralysed by its own unpopularity and the fear that Le Pen's slogans will sound more appealing.
“In fact a majority of the French don’t agree with the FN’s key idea that French nationals should have priority access to jobs and services,” says Mayer. But few politicians seem willing to say so.
