LESS THAN 18 months ago, Marine Le Pen was beaten and exhausted. She had lost the French presidential run-off to Emmanuel Macron, after a wild-eyed debate performance that left her fans aghast. Her leadership of the National Front, a party of blood-and-soil populists, was strained, and she was said to be depressed. Within months, she lost her closest ally, Florian Philippot, and found her party's French bank accounts unexpectedly closed.
Yet there she was in Rome on October 8th with a new glint in her eye. Alongside Matteo Salvini, Italy's interior minister, a beaming Ms Le Pen railed against "totalitarian" Europe and proclaimed the start of a new "history with a capital H". Populism and nationalism may have been defeated at the ballot box in France in 2017. But Ms Le Pen is hoping that next May's elections to the European Parliament will show that her party, renamed the National Rally, is still a force to be reckoned with.
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The Economist: Europe