# Marine Le Pen's bid for power and the history of France's far right Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/irish-times-inside-politics-170288/marine-le-pen-s-bid-for-power-and-the-history-of-france-s-far-right Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/irish-times-inside-politics-170288/marine-le-pen-s-bid-for-power-and-the-history-of-france-s-far-right.md Podcast: [Irish Times Inside Politics](https://stenobird.com/podcast/irish-times-inside-politics-170288) Published: 2026-07-13T16:18:46+00:00 Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/inside-politics-2/episodes/marine-le-pens-bid-for-power-and-the-history-of-frances-far Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/6155db9059a3fa00137f30a9/e/6a550fe608f5afd13415c3aa/media.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/irish-times-inside-politics-170288/episodes/marine-le-pen-s-bid-for-power-and-the-history-of-france-s-far-right Duration seconds: 3371 ## Resource Last week an appeals court opened the way for Marine Le Pen of French far-right party National Rally to stand in next year's presidential election. If the far right comes to power in Paris it will be the culmination of a long journey that is outlined in The Dark Side of France: A History of the Far Right, a new book by Irish journalist Enda O’Doherty.  Hugh talks to O’Doherty about his book and what a Le Pen victory would mean. They discuss tensions within National Rally between economically liberal conservatism and its working-class base and trace the far right’s roots from the Dreyfus Affair and antisemitism through Action Française, Vichy collaboration, the Algeria crisis and how Marine’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen built up National Rally, then called Front National. Would you like to receive daily insights into world events delivered to your inbox? Sign up for Denis Staunton's Global Briefing newsletter here: irishtimes.com/newsletters/global-briefing/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/irish-times-inside-politics-170288/episodes/marine-le-pen-s-bid-for-power-and-the-history-of-france-s-far-right/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/irish-times-inside-politics-170288/marine-le-pen-s-bid-for-power-and-the-history-of-france-s-far-right.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.