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00:00Well the French far-right then making unprecedented gains in the first round
00:04of voting in snap legislative elections that were called by Emmanuel Macron
00:09about three weeks ago when he dissolved Parliament. We're going to be taking
00:14stock now of those results. We can talk to our international affairs editor
00:19Ketavan Ghorjasdani. Ketavan, as we're seeing on the screen, a historic result
00:24for the national rally and its allies earning over 33% of the votes that were
00:30followed by the new popular front the left-wing alliance with 28% and in third
00:35place we saw a French President Emmanuel Macron's Together Alliance earning just
00:3920% of the vote. This represents a historic moment for the national rally
00:45and a turning point because the party was once on the fringes of French
00:49politics. Yes it's a historic result but not one that is a surprise if you
00:54see the evolution of the far-right and their presence in French politics and
01:00this is largely due to Marine Le Pen's efforts to sort of rebrand the far-right,
01:07to rebrand the national rally also with a change of name from the National
01:12Front to the national rally and her efforts to distance herself from the
01:16founder of the national rally, her own father Jean-Marie Le Pen. You have to
01:23remember that back in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second
01:28round of the presidential election it was a shock to the system in French
01:31politics. Having the far-right in the second round of the presidential
01:35election was a huge surprise. He of course was beaten in the second round
01:40very largely by Jacques Chirac but it was really the beginning of the far-right
01:45really making it and becoming a force to be reckoned with in French politics and
01:49over the years they systematically have made gains in each election. In 2017 when
01:56Marine Le Pen was in the second round of the presidential election it was no
02:01longer such a shock. She lost but it was not as big of a surprise as when her
02:06father made it to the second round and then even less so in 2022. Some of the
02:12reasons and some of the ways she has rebranded the the far-right is moving
02:19away from the sort of blatant racism, blatant anti-semitism of her father to
02:26focus the party on questions of immigration, on questions of security.
02:33Economically it became way less liberal if you will and also on matters of
02:39foreign policy especially when it comes to Europe. She herself moved away of
02:44calling for a Frexit, completely leaving the European Union to refocus staying
02:51Euro-septic but deciding that it was easier to sort of renovate the European
02:58Union from within rather than leave. And if you look at the results from the
03:05national rally between 2022 and 2024 it's a huge jump. In 2022 it was about
03:1118.7% and now it's 33% so the percentage is already a pretty big jump but if you
03:19look at the number of votes that's where you see how big of a gain they've made.
03:244.2 million back in 2022, 11.5 million in this first round this time around so
03:33that is a huge gain for the far-right and this evolution over the past two
03:39decades is how we've gotten to the point of possibly having the national
03:45rally in government in power in France for the first time since a World War II.