Premier Homme: qui est Louis Aliot, Marine Le Pen's rugby-playing boyfriend?
Should Emmanuel Macron upset the odds and fail in the French presidential runoff on May 7, the Élysée Palace’s Salon Bleu – the traditional office of the First Lady – could be filled, for the first time, with the musky scent and laddish trappings of a Première Homme.
Over the past eight years, National Front leader Marine Le Pen has been in a relationship with Louis Aliot, the party’s giant vice president and deputy leader.
Don’t expect him to be measuring the palace drapes just yet, mind. Aliot has indicated he would not be working from the official residence, and has still not confirmed if he’d even live there – a move we now know as ‘doing a Melania’.
Given his job, though, he is likely to be considerably close to the throne than either of François Hollande’s companions in office, Julie Gayet and Valérie Trierweiler, and certainly more involved than Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
Aliot, who at 47 is a year younger than his formidable ‘domestic partner’ and boss, was born in Toulouse to parents of Algerian and Jewish descent. As a politically active young man he put his 6’5ins frame to use playing rugby (alas, not a right winger but a flanker) and trained as a lawyer, before rising through the National Front ranks with relative easer.
Aliot is a divorced father of two, while Le Pen – also a lapsed Catholic – is twice divorced and a mother of three. She certainly has a type: both her husbands, Frank Chauffroy (the father of her children) and Eric Lorio are also former National Front colleagues. Le Pen and Aliot are said to have been romantically involved since 2009, and bought a house on the Mediterranean coast the following year.
En direct de Perpignan, dédicace à closer !!! �� pic.twitter.com/F8y9pOhthU
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) May 30, 2014
As a couple they are discreet, but not all the time. In 2014, when a magazine suggested their relationship may be on the rocks, Le Pen tweeted a photo of her giving Aliot a dementor-style kiss in a flower market.
It was likely an embarrassing moment for Aliot, but not the worst thing that happened to him that year – in May, two gay rights activists within National Front were expelled for putting laxative in his wine at a party event.
Aliot was said to be enraged, but, frankly, if you’re prepared to be Marine Le Pen’s number two in life and work, c’est la guerre, Louis, c’est la guerre.
