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What accounts for Marine Le Pen's popularity? As a populist wave sweeps across the Western world, France is emerging as a key battleground and she is scoring record ratings for a leader of an 'outsider' party and looks set to get through to the second round of the presidential elections.

How much is it to do with an increasingly familiar politics which blames global elites and immigrants for economic and social woes? And how much is it a distinctively French form, mixing policies of the left and the right in a brew which harks back to previous generations of Gallic leaders?

What turns a party previously seen as fascist into one seriously vying for the highest office in the land? Anand Menon examines how Marine Le Pen has detoxified her father's party and asks what its success says about France's future as one of two anchoring states of the EU.

Image: Marine Le Pen, Credit: EPA/Lionel Bonaventure