Marine Le Pen, the far-right Rassemblement national (RN) leader, formally kicked off her campaign for France's 2027 presidential election on Sunday with a major speech in Hénin-Beaumont, a working-class town in northern France that has long served as her political stronghold. Greeted by chants of "Marine présidente," she outlined a platform centred on housing policy and the contentious concept of "priorité nationale" — the principle that French nationals should receive preferential access to public services over non-citizens.

In her address, Le Pen placed the housing crisis at the heart of her presidential project. She promised to reserve social housing and personal housing allowances (known as APL) for French citizens, framing the measure as a "natural and just right" regardless of skin colour or religion. She also pledged to repeal the SRU law — a longstanding piece of legislation that obliges municipalities to maintain a minimum share of social housing — and to allow the sale of a portion of public housing stock to French buyers. Additional proposals included evicting the families of delinquents from social housing, introducing an anti-squat law, making public land available to developers in exchange for building affordable apartments, and converting vacant office buildings into residential units. She also promised to scrap the "zéro artificialisation nette" environmental land-use rule, which she dismissed as an "ideological norm," and to replace the existing energy renovation subsidy scheme with a zero-interest loan programme she called "100% rénov."

Notably absent from Sunday's speech were references to several politically sensitive topics, including the Islamic veil, pension reform, and the war in Ukraine — subjects that have animated public debate in France during the autumn political season. Le Pen also made no mention of her recent criminal conviction, which had cast uncertainty over her eligibility to stand. She indicated that her campaign would formally begin in October with a rally in Orléans, a city in north-central France. The event in Hénin-Beaumont was attended by RN party president Jordan Bardella, who turned 31 on Sunday, though Le Pen's pointed acknowledgement of his birthday came amid persistent rumours of tension between the two leading figures of the movement.

Turning her fire on the political establishment, Le Pen declared that after a decade under Emmanuel Macron and successive prime ministers Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, France no longer needed analysis but "an autopsy." She framed the coming election in stark terms: a choice between continuing with "habits and turpitudes" or a national "awakening" leading to what she called "the renaissance of France."

The speech marks a significant moment in a presidential race that Le Pen is currently leading in opinion polls. Her campaign's focus on housing taps into a genuine and widespread crisis in France, lending her platform a degree of concrete, everyday relevance while simultaneously reinforcing the RN's long-standing identity politics. She is expected to face questions on the issues she avoided this week in a major televised interview.