Macron camp clash with Le Pen over border closures as poll sees her closing in on French presidency

Marine Le Pen has been buoyed in recent days by a poll seeing her closing in on Emmanuel Macron in a 2022 presidential runoff

Credit: THOMAS SAMSON/AFP

The French government ratcheted up a war of words with Marine Le Pen after the far-Right leader accused President Emmanuel Macron of wasting time over Covid border closures, saying they offered “no magic wand”.

The clash came days after a shock poll suggesting the National Rally leader would take a record-high share of the vote in a final-round presidential run-off with Mr Macron just 15 months ahead of the ballot in which the pair are expected to face off for the second time.

The Harris Interactive poll for Le Parisien saw Ms Le Pen garnering 48 per cent of the vote if the election took place today while Mr Macron would be re-elected with 52 per cent.

"It’s a poll, it’s a snapshot of a moment, but what it shows is that the idea of me winning is credible, plausible even," Ms Le Pen said on Friday.

With new French rules banning flights to and from countries outside the EU coming into force on Monday, Ms Le Pen accused Mr Macron of failing to shut borders fast enough saying “what a waste of time”.

“Since the beginning, without being heeded, we’ve been saying that one of the most efficient means to slow down the epidemic (is to shut borders),” she said last week.

On Monday, Mr Macron’s Europe minister Clément Beaune, hit back saying: “The virus has no passport and it’s not about barricading oneself in as if that was the miracle cure.”

“Marine Le Pen knows full well what has happened or else she doesn’t know and that’s even more serious. She needs a reality check: we have already used the tool of borders to protect ourselves. But it’s a tool for protection, not a magic wand,” he told France Inter radio.

Border closures offer no 'magic wand' to stemming Covid said French Europe minister Clément Beaune

Credit: BENOIT TESSIER/ REUTERS

In the same interview, Mr Beaune was forced to deny the EU’s handling of the vaccine crisis was “the best advertisement for Brexit”.

“This has nothing to do with Brexit,” he said.

“The British are in an extremely difficult sanitary situation. They are taking a lot of risks with their vaccination programme. I can understand that. They have spaced out massively the delay between the two injections, up to 42 days. Our scientists tell us you mustn’t do that," he said.

France imposed various restrictions since the pandemic first struck and shut its borders with the UK before Christmas citing concerns over the “English variant” before agreeing to open up for essential travel and truckers producing a recent lateral flow test.

Unlike Britain and Germany, President Macron has decided, for now, not to impose a third national lockdown and to maintain a strict nighttime curfew. Health minister Olivier Véran on Sunday said that the number of new cases had barely increased over the past week. Deaths of around 250 a day are currently less than a quarter of the number in Britain or Germany.

However, the French remain sceptical of their administration with a poll in the JDD newspaper on Sunday showing that only 36 per cent had confidence in the government’s handling of the Covid crisis.

Sticking the knife in, Ms Le Pen accused the government of acting "like a dead dog floating along in the water".

"We have the feeling of being knocked around without ever anticipating, without ever looking ahead, without ever taking the decisions that allow us to avoid, when it’s possible, lockdown number 1, number 2 or number 3," she said.