Marine Le Pen Speaks to The Guardian

You may be familiar with this video. The English subtitles spared me the effort of a translation, but I'm not sure this is Marine at her best. She is certainly forceful enough on economic matters, but she seems much too accommodating towards Muslims, and too eager to point out that there have never been any problems in Hénin-Beaumont. She may be right in praising the good relations between Muslim and French residents, but the fact that there are so many Muslims in France is a major problem even when they are well-behaved. It is possible that she toned down her rhetoric for The Guardian. Her best moment is when she claims the woman with the headscarf lied. I don't know if the woman lied, but I did not like the sight of her with her smug husband eating snack food. Are they Socialists pretending to be converts?

Marine Le Pen was defeated in Hénin-Beaumont when she ran for mayor in 2010 thanks to the collaboration between Sarkozy's UMP and the Socialists. The same ruse was used on June 17 when she lost her bid for the National Assembly. Whether the votes themselves are fixed or not, she has enough enemies there to prevent her from being anything but a regional councilor. She probably could have been elected to the Assembly if she had settled in another voting district.