PARIS, Feb 9 — It is difficult to see daylight between their policies, but French far-right presidential hopefuls Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour are tearing chunks out of each other in hope of making the run-off against incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

The two agree on any number of points: expelling foreigners who repeatedly break the law, privatising France’s public broadcasters, stopping construction of wind turbines in favour of nuclear energy and ending free trade agreements to protect French farmers.

But "what’s at stake is the leadership of the far-right, with two very distinct profiles,” said Stephane Francois, professor of political science at the University of Mons in neighbouring Belgium.

"On the one hand, you have Marine Le Pen, who has tried to soften her language” to eliminate traditional reluctance to vote far-right, Francois said, while Zemmour "goes straight for what’s radical and thinks Le Pen is too moderate”.

After Le Pen and Zemmour held competing rallies, the far-right mayor of southern town Beziers Robert Menard told broadcaster CNews Sunday that "they said more or less the same things”.

But Zemmour "continues to be brutal, hard, cutting, he’s wrong to be like that, he’s dividing France,” added Menard, himself a Le Pen supporter, but also a friend of Zemmour.

One of the more controversial proposals of the ultranationalist Zemmour is to ban parents from giving their children foreign-sounding first names. He has also likened young criminals in predominantly immigrant housing estates to jihadists.

A recent survey by pollsters Ipsos Sopra-Steria found the far-right candidates neck-and-neck at around 14 per cent, while conservative Valerie Pecresse’s 16.5 per cent kept her in place as top challenger to Macron, with around 24 per cent backing.

‘No Asterix village’

Coming after a long career in TV punditry, Zemmour’s candidacy has upset 53-year-old Le Pen’s third run at the Elysee Palace.

In recent weeks he has wooed away high-profile members of her camp, with even her niece Marion Marechal saying she now leans towards the former journalist.

Le Pen had spent years softening the image of the outfit she inherited from her father Jean-Marie, going so far as to change its name from the toxic "National Front” to "National Rally” (RN) once he was safely retired from the leadership.

Although she reached the second round in 2017, Macron won handily after a humiliating TV debate in which Le Pen appeared to lack command of the issues.

This time, "my laws are already written... my plans are thought through, straightforward and costed,” she told newspaper Le Figaro last week.

But while she hammered on Macron’s open flank, the cost-of-living debate around rising inflation and energy prices, Le Pen could not help but make some swipes at her ideological twin’s camp.

Zemmour "isn’t fighting to win, but to kill the National Rally,” Le Pen insisted, accusing him of trying to set up "some fantastical realignment of politics” that could sweep him to power at the next election in 2027.

She charged that the other far-right candidate was defending a narrow vision of a traditional Catholic France.

"My aim isn’t to defend Asterix’s village,” she told Le Figaro — a reference to the world-famous comic-book character whose tiny hometown is the last to hold out against Roman invaders.

‘Great replacement’

Zemmour tacked away from questions on economics and inflation in an interview with broadcaster France Inter on Monday.

"There is one major problem, which is the great replacement of the French people by another people, another civilisation,” the 63-year-old said, returning to his stock theme of immigration and Islam.

The phrase "Great Replacement” is drawn from a 2011 book by French writer Renaud Camus, whose conspiratorial argument that white Europeans are being deliberately supplanted by non-white immigrants has inspired extreme-right figures like Christchurch mass shooter Brenton Tarrant.

And the name of Zemmour’s party, "Reconquest!”, evokes the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain and Portugal during the Middle Ages.

"Zemmour is reinventing or recreating the National Front in its early years, the 1970s and 80s,” said Stephane Francois, the political scientist.

"He’s pouring oil on the flames, sending messages to the most radical of the extreme right... he wants to rally behind him the right of the UMP (former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party), identitarians, neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and so on.”

The candidate continues to double down on his claim that France bears no responsibility for the rounding-up of Jews during the Nazi occupation.

"It was the Germans who demanded this roundup,” he told France Inter.

Meanwhile, he retorted that allegations from Pecresse and Le Pen that he is backed by Nazis were "stupid”.

"There are no Nazi supporters in my team,” Zemmour said. — AFP