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I have read that Marine Le Pen has announced that she will momentarily step aside from her role as the leader of France's Front National (FN) political party.
How does this have any relevance for the current presidential elections?
It is mentioned in the article that she has based her decision for the move on her conviction that
the president must bring together all of the French people
but isn't that true anyway?
Adrien's answer has a lot of merits. It is indeed a marketing strategy, especially done at this moment (between the two rounds).
It can also be said that this is a French tradition: the President is the President of all French people, designated to lead them all and serve their interest, and not only the supporters of the winning party.
This comes from Charles de Gaulle, the founder of the Vth Republic and the current French constitution (established in 1958), that the French President should be above all parties. Here is an abstract of his Speech of Bayeux in June 1946, where he exposes his vision of the role of the President (translation is mine):
C’est donc du chef de l’État, placé au-dessus des partis, élu par un collège qui englobe le Parlement, mais beaucoup plus large et composé de manière à faire de lui le président de l’Union française en même temps que celui de la République, que doit procéder le pouvoir exécutif.
Translation:
It is therefore the head of state, placed above the parties, elected by a college which encompasses the Parliament, but much broader and composed as to make him the President of the French Union, as well as the President of the Republic, from which must emanate the executive power.
As previous recent examples, you can consider:
It should be noted that, as member of the UMP/RPR, Chirac and Sarkozy considered themselves as de Gaulle's political heirs. On the other hand, Mitterand was a strong opponent of de Gaulle.
As for Marine Le Pen, this is probably the right timing to do so. Observers of the politics in France often claim that French people "choose in the first round, and eliminate in the second round". After gathering enough supporters in the first round to stay in the competition, she needs now to convince the voters of the candidates that failed to vote for her.
Her move is a way to give her a more universal stature. In practice, does it has a lot of effect? My personal opinion is that no one cares...
This is a marketing strategy in order to gather more people because the NF is something that still scares and worries a lot of people. A similar fact was the removal of her family name from her campaign posters to dissociate from her father and soften her image. This also give her more freedom and let her the possibility to amend her project to rally more people.
But this is a recent law (...) According to Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_and_married_names#France), women keeping their maiden names has been the law since 1789. I can concede that it was (...) passed by feminists and socio-egalitarists, if you want to look at the French Revolution like that, but it's not exactly a "recent" law. You have a point in that she could have easily used her husband's name if she wanted to; my only complain being that is not her "real" name as you said.
Like @adrien54 said, it is mostly a marketing strategy without much consequencies. She has 13 days to convince people to vote for her and she has a lot to do in order to beat Emmanuel Macron who is, at the moment, expected to get around 60-70% in the second round. She has to somehow do some pretty good 'PR' tactics in order to succeed.
That action intend to make her close to the people, leaving the political party aside in order to appear like the people's candidate. She also want to blur the bad reputation that the NF has with a lot of french people. That is also a way to portrait Emmanuel Macron as the candidate from the current system which she criticizes.
She will also be able to contest criticism made against her as the leader of the NF. She is not leading the NF anymore. The goal is also to push aside the legacy of the Le Pen name. That name has a truly bad connotation and that is what scares most people.
To conclude, it is more a PR stunt than really anything else. She will most definitely take the leadership back after the elections.
In part, that is simply because the FN is less nationally popular than Marine Le Pen herself.
In 2014, FN earned 7% popular vote in elections.
Marine Le Pen is projected to get 30+% vote in direct matchup with Macron. She's far more popular than the National Front itself; therefore she needs to dis-associate herself from the FN to earn broad national vote.
