French far-right leader Le Pen kicks off presidential campaign

With us was our reporter, Antonia Kerrigan, who is in Orléans. Antonia, give us first the main takeaways of what we've been hearing there from Marine Le Pen. Well, Marine Le Pen's speech was focused on this grand analogy of a renaissance. She described a France currently in something analogous to the Dark Ages. She said that criminals go unpunished and neighborhoods are run by mafias. And she said that she, under her presidency, she would restore the rule of law, which she says is currently completely degraded. And then in her analogy of the Renaissance, she talked about a return to freedom of thought, a return to the sanctification of knowledge and education. And, of course, she was expansive on the idea of a return to civility, the respect for law, rules, even cues. In fact, she says that it's not normal that in France, where it's not the case in other countries, she says that you can't leave a mobile phone on a table for 20 seconds without it being stolen and she said another of the grand limits because she said that one of the inventions of the renaissance was this idea of limits of boundaries was the border that of course she says exists to protect the french people she said as well that she would like it once again to be possible as it once was to say it's french that's a beautiful thing she is strongly suggesting that the French identity has been, let's say, has been marginalised, has been stigmatised under this France that she describes as having succumbed to what she calls communitarianism, which is essentially the idea in which other identities that she views as non-French are allowed to defend and are allowed to exist, are allowed to essentially co-exist alongside a French identity. She said she would put an end to that. However, she also said that she wanted to restore the value and recognition of regional identities, which seems perhaps arguably somewhat paradoxical because she said that what the Macronists want to push is this idea of a rootless man, man who lives squished together in enormous globalized metropolises. Essentially, she condemned France under Emmanuel Macron as having trampled on the French identity, what makes France French. And, of course, she also said that the French identity was one that had succumbed to décroissance. That's the idea of anti-growth politics in economics, in industry and in farming. It's an extensive speech. It's not as policy-based as you heard just before from Jordan Bardella, who put forward a long and fairly punchy list of the ways in which the national rally would crack down on crime, would crack down on immigration and would restore, for instance, discipline to schools and would restore these kinds of fairly conservative policy suggestions. She was less expansive on policy and was much more, I would say, setting the scene for the kind of campaign. She said it was to be general, and general is what it has been. Antonio, thank you so much for bringing us those updates from Orléans.