France: Marie Le Pen suspends presidential bid

Marie Le Pen, the right wing National Rally candidate, suspends her presidential bid as it becomes clear that she is struggling to win enough support from local leaders according to her spokesperson.
She cancelled a press conference on education today as well as tomorrow’s engagement that would have seen her travel to the Somme.
Her spokesperson told RTL that she lacked a little over 40 of the 500 signatures of support needed from local elected officials to be able to run for the top office.
Le Pen, who is a controversial figure, has seen her support from local official dwindle amid competition from other right-wing candidates even though she has the support of the influential mayor of Beziers, Robert Menard.
Menard had flirted with support for ultra-right polemicist-cum-politician Eric Zemmour, a candidate that has received the backing of ex US president Donald Trump.
Following her loss in the 2017 run-off Le Pen had sought to sanitise her party’s image, to make it more acceptable to the majority of the country who voted for the current President, Emmanuel Macron.
She changed the party’s name and moved her politics towards the centre, ridding it of the jackbooted imagery that clung to her Holocaust-denying father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
The suspension of the presidential bid by Marie Le Pen will throw the race wide open, with the party seemingly at war with itself.

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