France’s far right: The Le Pens are coming

Date: 22/11/03

France's National Front is still attracting a lot of support

THE drum-beat throbs, the imagery is judicious: Marine with her twin babies, Marine shopping, Marine in her kitchen, Marine as a child with her father. Just an ordinary French woman, leading an ordinary life. Except that her father is Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front. And the party that evicted the Socialists in the first round of last year's presidential election may match its 2002 score of 17% in next March's regional elections.

This was Marine Le Pen's first campaign meeting as head of the party list in Ile-de-France, the region around Paris. Appointed earlier this year as a party vice-president, she supplied a familiar blend of coarse nationalism and populist defiance. French politicians, left and right, were interchangeably dishonest: “the same policies, the same mistakes, the same autism, the same denial of reality, the same taste for power”. The National Front was now “the only force of opposition in our country.”

To her detractors, Ms Le Pen's appointment was bitter confirmation of the boss's dynasticism. To her supporters, it was a clever attempt to broaden the appeal of a traditionally macho party. Young, a working mother, but as punchy as her father, and with the same gravelly voice, she is a fresh face for a party keen to pick up more sophisticated voters. Her father will concentrate on the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region, where he heads the party list. She will market a more tempered, contemporary message in metropolitan Paris.

“The regional elections of 2004 will be a new April 21st,” Ms Le Pen insists, referring to the date when her father beat the Socialist presidential candidate, Lionel Jospin, into third place. Bigger in person even than she appears on screen, Ms Le Pen is a formidable presence, if less assured than her father. She claims that the party could get 20% of the vote next March. Her prospects of claiming the presidency of the Paris region are slim. But her father could snatch the top spot in Provence, where he won 28% of the vote in 1998. In a two-round poll, with a 10% threshold in the first round, a three-way contest between the Socialists, the National Front and the centre-right could end up favouring the far right.

What explains the Front's resurgence? After the 2002 shock there was much talk of “never again”. A million people took to the streets in shame and defiance. President Jacques Chirac selected Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a politician with no trace of elitism, as prime minister. Nicolas Sarkozy, a steely right-winger, was sent to the interior ministry to clamp down on crime and immigration. This would rob the far right, it was hoped, of its populist appeal.

Yet today Mr Raffarin's popularity has sunk, from 58% at the start of the year to just 33% now. But the left has not been the main beneficiary. Instead, a structural change has taken hold: a collapse of support for mainstream parties, coupled with a rise in support for extremes on both right and left. The far right no longer has a monopoly on the protest vote. But, as Pascal Perrineau, a political scientist at Sciences-Po, says, “Le Pen is an expert at politicising hostility towards the government.”

Racial tensions are rising. This week, a Jewish school outside Paris was burnt. Demands by some French Muslims to wear the veil at school, or to reserve time at swimming pools for Muslim women, have provoked a backlash. “We want to keep the essence of France,” explains Marine. “They started with one mosque, now there are mosques everywhere; now they want the veil; next separate swimming pools. Integration has totally failed.”

The National Front is playing a patient game. In a satirical television show, “Les Guignols de l'Info”, Mr Le Pen now makes silent appearances. “What are you doing?” asks the presenter. “Nothing,” he replies, “just waiting.” In her headquarters, Ms Le Pen drives home the anti-elitist message: “I do my own shopping, I take my kids to school. I don't go around with a chauffeur and a bodyguard; I live in the real world, and that's what counts.”

France's National Front is still attracting a lot of support.

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