French PM admits Le Pen could win presidential election

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said that National Front leader Marine Le Pen has a chance of winning next year’s presidential election, boosted by the victory of Donald Trump in the USA.

Addressing an economic conference in Berlin, Valls said “it is possible” that the leader of the French anti-immigration party could win next year.

Le Pen is widely tipped to reach the second round of the election on 7 May, where she would then face off against a candidate of the left or the right.

Warning of “the danger presented by the extreme right”, Valls said that “this means that the balance of politics will change completely”.

Valls also stressed the difference between Trump and Le Pen - that despite his “worrying” proposals, the US president-elect is the head of a mainstream party.

Le Pen, who has been leader of the National Front since 2011, has said that Trump “made possible what had previously been presented as impossible”.

“It’s really the victory of the people against the elites,” she said on the Andrew Marr show. “If I can draw a parallel with France, then yes, I wish in France also the people upend the table, around which the elites are dividing up what should go to the French people.”

She claimed that if she became French President – Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and herself would make a lot of progress towards “world peace”.