This Sunday, France goes to the polls for its departmental elections, where voters will decide the makeup of more than 2,000 local councils. The day is being talked of as an important milestone for Marine Le Pen, leader of the increasingly popular far-right party the Front National, as she prepares to bid for the presidency in two years' time. "This is the big straight line to 2017," she said in a speech early this month in Paris. "There is no minor election, no minor vote."
The Front National are seen as a right-wing eurosceptic party with a chance of wielding real power—more so than Britain's Ukip or Greece's Golden Dawn, for example. But will this Sunday see them come closer to doing so?
The answer is Yes. The Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, has been taking a calculatingly alarmist tone over the rise of Marine Le Pen, particularly in the run-up to these elections, summed up the situation fairly accurately on French national radio last week: “May I share my dread with you?… Don’t you think that the Front National, which won 25 per cent of the vote in the European elections, perhaps 30 per cent in the [upcoming] departmental elections can’t come to power? Not in 2022, not in 2029, but in 2017!”
There is no doubt that Valls, in endlessly referring to Marine Le Pen’s spectacular rise, has been feeding the flames. His reasons for this political pyromania are simple: he wants to find himself in the second round of the said presidential elections with Marine Le Pen as his rival. His calculation is based on the fact that in 2002 President Jacques Chirac, of whom the French were utterly sick, managed to win a second term against Jean-Marie Le Pen, because when it came to the crunch those who had given him their protest vote knew he wasn’t presidential material.
The difference today is that Marine Le Pen is widely perceived as a credible politician. Much more deft than her father was, both at keeping her own counsel and at silencing the fascists in her party, she has, ever since 2010, been fighting to turn the Front National into an acceptable, mainstream party that champions not just the racists in this country but the disinherited, the unemployed, the rural poor and the millions of French people who are afraid of globalisation.
On Sunday Le Pen is most likely just going to consolidate where she has already done well. So while she might become a serious contender in a sense, this will probably be where she gets stuck.
If you think of the Front National's support, it looks like a crescent moon that starts in the north, goes down the east and stops at the south east. These places are where Le Pen is expected to do well on Sunday. The only real indication that something fundamental has changed would be if her support grew in other places that have not recently supported her party, such as Brittany.
My sense is that this probably won't happen. Even if the predicted low turnout in this election artificially magnifies Front National support in some places, that is unlikely to be repeated in future Presidential elections where turnout is generally high. French politics is particularly polarised at the moment. In a polarised polity, what you see is an entrenchment of tendencies rather than the development of new tendencies.
This week's Big Question is edited by Josh Lowe
The Front National are seen as a right-wing eurosceptic party with a chance of wielding real power—more so than Britain's Ukip or Greece's Golden Dawn, for example. But will this Sunday see them come closer to doing so?
Yes—Le Pen is credible
Lucy Wadham, novelistThe answer is Yes. The Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, has been taking a calculatingly alarmist tone over the rise of Marine Le Pen, particularly in the run-up to these elections, summed up the situation fairly accurately on French national radio last week: “May I share my dread with you?… Don’t you think that the Front National, which won 25 per cent of the vote in the European elections, perhaps 30 per cent in the [upcoming] departmental elections can’t come to power? Not in 2022, not in 2029, but in 2017!”
There is no doubt that Valls, in endlessly referring to Marine Le Pen’s spectacular rise, has been feeding the flames. His reasons for this political pyromania are simple: he wants to find himself in the second round of the said presidential elections with Marine Le Pen as his rival. His calculation is based on the fact that in 2002 President Jacques Chirac, of whom the French were utterly sick, managed to win a second term against Jean-Marie Le Pen, because when it came to the crunch those who had given him their protest vote knew he wasn’t presidential material.
The difference today is that Marine Le Pen is widely perceived as a credible politician. Much more deft than her father was, both at keeping her own counsel and at silencing the fascists in her party, she has, ever since 2010, been fighting to turn the Front National into an acceptable, mainstream party that champions not just the racists in this country but the disinherited, the unemployed, the rural poor and the millions of French people who are afraid of globalisation.
No—She'll probably just get stuck
Catherine Fieschi, director of CounterpointOn Sunday Le Pen is most likely just going to consolidate where she has already done well. So while she might become a serious contender in a sense, this will probably be where she gets stuck.
If you think of the Front National's support, it looks like a crescent moon that starts in the north, goes down the east and stops at the south east. These places are where Le Pen is expected to do well on Sunday. The only real indication that something fundamental has changed would be if her support grew in other places that have not recently supported her party, such as Brittany.
My sense is that this probably won't happen. Even if the predicted low turnout in this election artificially magnifies Front National support in some places, that is unlikely to be repeated in future Presidential elections where turnout is generally high. French politics is particularly polarised at the moment. In a polarised polity, what you see is an entrenchment of tendencies rather than the development of new tendencies.
This week's Big Question is edited by Josh Lowe
