Marine Le Pen insists France has contractual obligations to deliver the vessel to Russia and should resist US pressure to break them
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s third-largest party Front National, demanded on Friday that France fulfilled its contract on the delivery of Mistral-class helipcopter carriers to Russia.
“France has taken obligations under the contract on the delivery of vessels to Russia. However, we now see that it has broken its obligation on the US president’s orders,” Le Pen said.
She added that no other country would sign any contracts with France that scraps deals at the last moments on Barack Obama’s orders.
“France should stop being a US lapdog and become a sovereign country free to make its own choice,” Le Pen said.
Russia and France signed a €1.2 billion deal for the delivery of two Mistral-class ships in June 2011. The first vessel, the Vladivostok, was floated out in October 201. The second ship, the Sevastopol, is supposed to be delivered in 2015. France will have to pay Russia a penalty fee if it fails to fulfil the contract.
The Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group in the European Parliament, headed by UKIP leader Nigel Farage, has been disbanded following the defection of a Latvian MEP.
The EFDD has existed for three months, including the August break.
If the EFDD can find a new MEP from a country not already in the group, it could re-form. The UK, the Czech Republic, Italy, France, Lithuania and Sweden are already represented in the group.
If the group is unable to re-form it could create a vacuum for Le Pen to restart her efforts to create a group, which she had planned to name the the ‘European Alliance for Freedom’.
Other groups in the Parliament welcomed the development. Manfred Weber, the leader of the centre-right European Peoples Party (EPP), called it “the first defeat for Eurosceptics”
A spokesperson for the EFDD group did not return calls for comment. All staff working for the EFDD group will lose their jobs unless the group can re-form.
Parliamentary groups must have at least 25 MEPs from seven different member states in order to be officially recognised by the Parliament. Iveta Grigule was the only Latvian MEP in the group, and her departure means that the EFDD does not have representation from enough member states. The group’s dissolution was officially announced today at a meeting of the conference of presidents (the group leaders).
The group was formed by UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Farage in 2009 under the name Europe of Freedom and Democracy. Most of its MEPs came from UKIP, with a handful from six other countries. It managed to stay intact for the full 2009-14 term.
Facing competition from Marine Le Pen’s efforts to create a new right-wing group in the Parliament, UKIP joined forces with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement in Italy and changed the group’s name, adding the word ‘direct’. In the new configuration, the 17 Italian MEPs shared the spotlight with UKIP’s 24 MEPs, and it is now co-led by Farage and Five Star MEP David Borrelli.
Grigule’s office said they were not yet aware of the reason for the defection. It may be related to the government-formation process in Latvia. Grigule is from the Union of Greens and Farmers party and there are ongoing talks about who is joining the government. The EFDD is seen as being pro-Putin and her membership in it may not have been palatable in a domestic context.
Learn more about the Five Star – UKIP alliance in this video interview with MEP Fabio Massimo Castaldo.
“Radicals and populists are utterly divided,” he said on Twitter. “No constructive work for citizens. Good that EFDD is no longer playing an official role.”
Catherine Bearder, the one British Liberal Democrats MEP left in the European Parliament after the party lost 10 seats in this year’s election, said it was “not surprising that UKIP has lost friends and alienated people in the European Parliament.” She said the development will make Farage a backbench MEP in the European Parliament, much like Douglas Carswell, who for the first time won a seat for UKIP in the British Parliament last week.
“Just like his new MP, Nigel Farage will now have to shout from the back benches – that is if he actually bothers to turn up,” she said.
The National Front won its first ever seats in France’s upper house of parliament on Sunday, as President Francois Hollande’s Socialist party lost its Senate majority.
The left still controls the lower house, which is the dominant legislative body in France, but Sunday’s ballot underlined the unpopularity of the president and the continued rise of the anti-immigration, anti-euro National Front.
The party, led by Marine Le Pen, took two seats in the august Senate, following on from its surprise victory in European parliamentary elections in May and its strong showing in municipal elections in March.
“These results are beyond what we hoped for,” said Le Pen. “Each day that passes, our ideas are increasingly being adopted by the French people… We have great potential.”
Half of the Senate’s 348 seats were up for grabs on Sunday, with only some 158,000 people, the vast majority local councillors, able to vote.
Early results showed that the main opposition party, the UMP, and the center-right UDI party took at least 20 seats from the left, which had a Senate majority of just six heading into the election. Final results were due later on Sunday.
“There is a complete rejection of Socialist policies,” UMP senator Roger Karoutchi told BFM TV.
Hollande’s popularity fell to a record low this month, with only 13 percent of those surveyed saying they were satisfied with the performance of president, who has struggled to revive the stagnant economy.
The National Front hopes to score an upset in the 2017 presidential election.
“There is only one door left for us to push and it is that of the Elysee,” said newly-elected National Front senator Stephane Ravier, referring to the French presidency.
The number of Jews who voted for the far-right National Front party soared in the most recent presidential election from the previous two votes, surveys showed.
In the surveys of French Jews, some 13.5 percent of 1,095 respondents who self-identified as Jews said they voted for National Front President Marine Le Pen in the 2012 presidential elections.
Asked about the two previous presidential elections, from 2002 and 2007, respectively only 6.1 percent and 4.3 percent of Jewish voters polled said they chose the National Front candidate — Le Pen’s father and predecessor as party leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has a history of convictions for “inciting racial hatred” and Holocaust denial.
Marine Le Pen has worked to rehabilitate the party and recently entered a war of words in the media with her father over his suggestion to put a Jewish singer “in the oven.”
The surveys were conducted over 10 years and compiled by the IFOP polling company for publication earlier this month by the news website atlantico.fr, which commissioned the report.
The National Front is a vociferous critic of what it describes as the government’s inaction to stop France’s “Islamization.”
Overall, National Front candidates received 19.2 percent of the vote in the first round in 2002 and 10.6 percent and 19 percent in the first rounds in the following two elections.
In a statement released Friday, National Front General Secretary Nicolas Bay blamed the government’s immigration policy for a 91 percent increase in the number of anti-Semitic attacks documented in France during the first seven months of 2014 over the corresponding period last year.
Muslims are the main perpetrators of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews, according to the Jewish watchdog BNVCA, or the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism.
“It demonstrates what National Front has long denounced: the development of a radical Islam which endangers the safety of citizens,” the statement said. “It is a direct consequence of the massive immigration that the political class of UMPS led for 40 years in an utterly irresponsible manner.”
UMPS is a mashup of the French-language initials of the centrist UMP and the left-wing Socialist Party.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy of UMP received more than 45 percent of the votes of Jews polled in the first rounds of both the 2007 and the 2012 elections — far above his share of the votes in the general voter population.
The Socialist Party, which is believed to have been a favorite among Jews in the 1970s and 1990s, fell far behind Sarkozy in the poll of Jews, nabbing 19.7 percent, 28.8 percent and 22.5 percent of the Jewish vote in the first rounds of the presidential elections of 2002, 2007 and 2012, respectively.
French premier Manuel Valls warned on Sunday that the National Front party is at the “gates of power.”
“In France, the extreme right of Marine Le Pen is at the gates of power,” Valls said. “And I, as a man of the left, will never be able to resign myself to that because it will be the weakest who will be the first to suffer. And it will also be a terrible, perhaps fatal, blow to Europe.”
France’s National Front, known for its anti-immigrant and anti-EU rhetoric, achieved unprecedented results in the latest EU polls, claiming nearly 25 percent of the votes and winning the election.
“Our people demand one type of politics: they want politics by the French, for the French, with the French. They don’t want to be led anymore from outside, to submit to laws.”
Speaking to French media, the head of France’s right-wing National Front likened the recent reshuffle of Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ cabinet to an “illusionist performance,” calling it a “circus.”
Le Pen suggested that French President Francois Hollande should dissolve the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament. She added that it was “more than necessary” and “the only responsible decision” Hollande would make since he became head of state five years ago.
“Francois Hollande tries to save time, but the damage is too deep,” Le Pen argued.
In August, Hollande asked Valls to form a new government following tensions within his cabinet over the country’s economic policy.
The decision came after strong criticism of the country’s economic direction – which the outgoing economy minister, Arnaud Montebourg, voiced as he called for a “major shift.”
Marine Le Pen, leader of the conservative Front National, would win the first round of a presidential election in France, according to a poll released Sunday, The Telegraph reports.
If an election were held next Sunday, Le Pen, who made major gains in recent local elections, would score a landslide victory against Francois Hollande, whose approval rating hit a record low of 13 percent in August.The survey found that she would take 30 percent of the vote as Holland would take only 16 percent. Le Pen would also led several other center right politicians, including former Premiers Alain Juppé and Francois Fillon. She would even defeat ex-president Nikolas Sarkozy, with 28 percent of the vote to his 25 percent, according to the poll. However the projections found that Le Pen would win a second round only if her rival was Hollande.
Commentators say Le Pen is taking electoral advantage of France’s weak and feuding mainstream parties. The ruling Socialist Party is in total disarray and the center right opposition Union for a Popular Movement has no leader.
In a recent interview with Le Monde, Le Pen called for parliament to be dissolved and said she would be willing to become prime minister, “cohabitating” with president Hollande. – Ria Novosti
France’s decision to suspend the delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier ships to Russia shows Paris’ obedience of American diplomacy, said National Front leader Marine Le Pen. Russia still believes that France will fulfill the contract.
France says it cannot deliver Mistral warship to Russia over Ukraine
“This decision is very serious, firstly because it runs contrary to the interests of the country and shows our obedience of American diplomacy,” Le Pen told France’s RTL radio.
She added that suspension of Mistral warships is also serious “for the reputation of France and the value of its word in trade relations.”
“It will have a huge cost: four months of employment in Saint-Nazaire [where Mistral vessels are under construction], millions of working hours,” Le Pen added, “The delay will cause a fine of 5 to 10 billion euro.”
On Wednesday France suspended delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier ships to Russia because of events in eastern Ukraine.
“The situation is serious. Russia’s recent actions in the east of Ukraine contravene the fundamental principles of European security,” said a statement from the office of President Francois Hollande.
The majority of the readers of French Le Figaro newspaper believe that French government is wrong to suspend the delivery of the ships to Russia.
The poll asked: “Is the French government right in suspending Mistral ships to Russia?” Seventy-three percent of respondents answered “No.”
According to Maria Zakharova, deputy spokeswoman of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, “the reputation of France as a reliable partner who complies with the contract obligations, is thrown into a fire of American political ambitions.”
Black French singer and celebrity Yannick Noah lost his diffamation case against Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National. Noah sued Le Pen because she had called him a “tax fugitive” on television. According to Marine Le Pen, he had “stashed” his money abroad. She made that allegedly defamatory statement on 9 March 2012 during a discussion programme on the pay TV channel Canal+. The talk show was on the contribution made by French immigrants such as Yannick Noah, Zinedine Zidane and Omar Sy.
Yannick Noah during his days as tennis player
Answering the question whether immigration was an opportunity for France, Marine Le Pen responded: “Two tax fugitives out of three, that’s not bad,” before referring specifically to Yannick Noah. “That means, instead of paying his taxes in France, well, this gentleman sees fit to give us moral lessons… giving us lessons on charity and sharing while he shares nothing, his money is stashed abroad and does not benefit the unfortunate French,” she declared. At the time she was a French presidential candidate.
As opposed to the argument advanced by the singer, “the statement does not imply any punishable fiscal fraud committed by him”, according to the judges of the 17th chamber of the correctional tribunal of Paris in their judgement delivered on 25 June 2013. Yannick Noah then appealed against the judgement.
After participating in a political gathering with François Hollande, the current French president, Yannick Noah was criticised by Valérie Rosso-Debord and Pierre Charon of the UMP party, then by Marine Le Pen, for his tax evasion. From 1992 to 1994 he was a Swiss resident and is still involved in litigation with the French authorities in a case pending before the Constitutional Court of France.
The ex-tennis champion has also sued the UMP senator Pierre Charon for defamation for calling him a “tax criminal”. During the first hearing the politician was fined 1 000 euros, but suspended, as well as a symbolic one euro of damages and interest, including judicial publication. The case on appeal will be heard on 16 October.
Marine Le Pen has failed to find support in the minimum of seven European Union countries for her conservative group, the European Alliance for Freedom.
Le Pen and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party did not gain enough allies to qualify as a single caucus in the new European parliament, which now denies them access to funding and extra speaking time. They would also not be able to serve on committees.
Following European parliamentary elections last month, won by Le Pen’s Front National, the various parties had until Monday midnights to form a group comprising at least 25 MEPs from at least seven countries.
The Le Pen-led grouping includes Wilders’ Freedom party, the Austrian Freedom Party, Italy’s Liga Nord and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang. Le Pen and Wilders easily easily exceeded the minimum seats required, the European Alliance for Freedom was two countries short of the required seven.
Wilders and Le Pen said they refused to collaborate with a new party of the extreme right in Poland, viewed as antisemitic but also certain to clash with Wilders’ and Le Pen’s views on immigration to their countries from eastern Europe.
The Polish New Right Congress – which advocates abolishing women’s voting rights – and the Lithuanian Order and Justice parties said they refused to join the Le Pen group.
The Lithuanian party preferred to join British Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s Europe of Freedom and Democracy parliamentary group.
Yesterday, the Front National declared that it failed to muster a full-sized European parliamentary group as it had not wanted to ally itself with parties demonstrating incompatible values.
Florian Philippot, the party’s vice-president, told the French radio station Europe 1: “We were several parties, but we needed to come from seven countries and this time it didn’t work.”
Philippot also said to Reuters: “We have no group, for the time being at least. But our deputies, who are more numerous than any other party in the French delegation, will be there to defend France under any circumstances, with or without a group.”
Ludovic de Danne, Le Pen’s European spokesman, tweeted: “Never mind the betrayals and media agitation. We and our allies will build a solid and coherent political group later.”
The new 751-seat European assembly sits for the first time next week.
Subsidies for political groups in the European parliament are substantial. The European Alliance for Freedom could have received up to €22m for operational expenses.
In its media release yesterday, the Front National stated:
“We regret it in the short term, but we take responsibility for our moral and political choice in the long term.
Convinced that it will be possible for us to form this group shortly, we are committed from the very first session in Strasbourg on 1 July to our struggle as patriots for our sovereignty, our identity and our liberty. We shall continue in parallel and with the greatest determination, our negotiations with several parties in Europe so as to constitute this greater formation in favour of sovereignty in the European parliament.”
A regional leader of the Front National in France who has been a party member since 2002, has resigned, saying the “oven batch issue” has been one “little detail too much”.
The leader of the Bas-Rhin division of the Front National resigned from the party on Friday 13 June in protest against the recent polemical remarks by Jean-Marie Le Pen in which he used the word “fournée” or “oven batch”.
“I am leaving the Front National, full stop,” said Pascale Ellès, 48. “The little detail that finally caused it, was the issue of the oven batch, because I have always had good relations with the Jewish and Muslim communities,” she explained. She is also married to a Muslim.
Pascale Ellès was in tenth position on the Front’s list during the European elections in the east of France. She joined the party in 2002. On Wednesday she sent her letter of resignation to the party’s presidency, addressing it to vice-president Florian Philippot, the right-hand man of Marine Le Pen, its leader.
According to the ex-member from the Alsace region, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s remarks flew in the face of the “work” of Florian Philippot in the party, “who has criticised no-one druing his European campaign”.
“Florian Philippot campainged around the issues confronting France and appealed to all French people, whoever they might be,” she emphasised.
In October 2013, Pascal Ellès, also made known her disagreement with the controversial statement of Advocate André Kommann, who was then in line for the heading the FN’s municipal list in Strasbourg. He cause some controversy by suggesting that the Swiss police should use attack dogs against criminals. He finally withdraw and was replaced by Jean-Luc Shcaffhauser who has since been elected as a European MP in the Ile-de-France region around Paris.
The leader of the Front National party Marine Le Pen talks to Sophie Shevardnadze on RT.
SS: Obama said the security of America’s European allies is sacrosanct, promising to boost U.S. military deployments and exercises around Europe. Does Europe need this kind of support?
MP: To defend ourselves against whom? […] To defend ourselves against whom? Well, you know that we are for leaving NATO, for France leaving NATO, we have a Gaullian vision of what international politics must be like, we are for developing our relations with Russia, without breaking ties with the United States. We believe that France must maintain its relations with all of the world’s great nations, and we do not want to be imposed with a way of seeing things by anybody. We aspire to have the freedom to determine the quality and the level of our international relations. But… to defend ourselves against whom? When we asked this question to a French politician, his answer was “China”. It almost makes you laugh. We can clearly see that, as a matter of fact, this is an opportunity for the United States to carry out military integration, and maybe tomorrow, economic integration, to extend the scope of its influence. The free-trade agreement that the United States want to sign at any price is really just another way to tie the European Union, in a quasi-definitive way, to the United States. This is, once again, a loss of independence, not to mention the catastrophic consequences that this free-trade agreement would have for us in terms of agriculture, industry, defence, etc. So this is much more a geopolitical treaty than a purely commercial or economic treaty.
S: The G7 condemned Russia for the situation in Ukraine, vowed more sanctions…Why are Western leaders calling on Russia and President Putin to end the violence, and not the government in Kiev, the newly-elected president they’ve been meeting with?
MP: That’s a good question. Because we are at the culmination of a Cold War that has been fought against Russia by the United States, to which the European capitals have completely submitted on an international level. It’s as simple as that, and a shame as well. And I would like to seize this opportunity to express my compassion and my sadness and my disgust to see these civil victims in the East of Ukraine, who are dying surrounded by the general indifference of the European political world and media. It is a real scandal which is happening on our doorstep, and you are right to say that from the moment Ukraine has a legitimate government, it is the government which must take responsibility. But for this, we would need to demand that the Ukrainian government dismantle and disarm the reigning militia, which would most likely embarrass a number of people.
SS: The elections in Ukraine were quick to be accepted by the major powers in the West – despite the civil war that’s going on in the country and the fact that there was no vote in the country’s rebellious East. At the same time, the elections in Syria, were branded illegitimate even before they were held. Why?
MP: Yes, but this has been happening for years! I mean, such and such decides who is on the good side and who is on the bad side. And this can change at any moment. The good guys of today will be the bad guys of tomorrow, and maybe the bad guys of today will become good tomorrow, if Washington decides that it is to their advantage to make them good. It is a shame, since there is a substantial amount of mistakes that have been made at an international level under Washington’s influence, especially in Syria. We were the only ones among the French political parties to oppose intervention in Syria, the first and only ones who, from the beginning, said that we were arming Islamic fundamentalists, who would, if they did win, implement a reign of terror like they did in Libya. This was, once again, because of us. We helped them come to power. This is the American method, the international American method: they defend their interests, or they think that they are defending them, since sometimes they make serious mistakes. What is terrible is that European countries no longer have a say in things. There are no more sovereign nations in Europe that can be the voice of reason for peaceful settlement of conflicts, the voice of balance between different interests of different nations.
SS: You’ve said the EU is responsible for the situation in Ukraine – did it ever know what it was getting into?
MP: By definition, it is not up to me to defend the competency of these bodies. To not know this would be tragic – such geopolitical ignorance seems astounding to me. Nevertheless, the result is there – the European Union did not play the role that it could have played, and it contributed to aggravating the situation. What is really a shame is that countries like France no longer have a diplomatic voice – because here is a conflict in which France, if it had kept a strong political voice, a balancing voice like the one I want it to recover, it could totally manage to overcome these difficulties. The diplomacy of the European Union is a catastrophe, and not only in Ukraine – each time the European Union participates on the global stage, it is usually either to create a problem or to aggravate it.
SS: A little while back there was talk about the new rising superpower – the European Union. These elections showed that the bloc is far from being a universally approved, superstate. Will Europe never unite now?
MP: Europe is not at stake; it is the European Union that is at stake. Europe exists, and it consists of nations whose wealth lies in their uniqueness, their sovereignty, their freedom, their democracy. So, I am for a Europe of nations – I wish that tomorrow we can constitute a Europe that could expand, but to countries that have preserved their sovereignty and that would work together on cooperative projects. This is what works, and this is what I want to implement, but in order to do this, we have to deconstruct this European Union.
Marine Le Pen’s party, the Front National, is on course to secure the best result ever, exit polls show.
France’s anti-immigrant Front National was on track to win at least 14 towns in local elections, beating its previous record amid public dissatisfaction with President Francois Hollande’s Socialists.
But the Socialists retained control of Paris town hall in local elections on Sunday as their candidate Anne Hidalgo comfortably won the mayoralty.
Promising to be the mayor of “all Parisians,” Miss Hidalgo hailed her historic win as the “victory for a Left-wing that remains faithful to its ideal.”
Miss Hidalgo said: “As the first woman mayor of Paris, I am aware of the challenge that this represents.”
The victory is some consolation for Mr Hollande’s ruling party, which according to partial tallies and exit polls was on track to lose its grip on dozens of major towns elsewhere across France.
After winning the northern town of Henin-Beaumont in round one, the FN took at least 13 more towns, including Béziers in the southwest and Fréjus, population 84,000, on the Riviera. Its best ever previous score was three, in 1995.
The Front National scored a major victory by claiming the mayorship of the 7th sector of Marseille, putting it in charge of 150,000 people.
“We have moved onto a new level,” Marine Le Pen, FN leader, claimed. “There is now a third major political force in our country.”
But the FN failed to take Avignon, where the Socialists won, or Perpignan and Forbach.
Some 80 per cent of the French want President Hollande to dismiss Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, according to a Harris Interactive poll this week, and Manuel Valls, the ambitious and tough-talking interior minister, is their favourite to replace him.
Despite the strong showing for the FN, the centre-Right opposition UMP party, also regained control from the Left of the majority of towns and cities of more than 9,000 inhabitants.
These included Reims, Saint-Etienne, Roubaix and Quimper.
France’s National Front party dealt a major blow to the ruling Socialists Sunday after several of its candidates took prime position in the first round of local elections.
According to preliminary results from the interior ministry, the UMP and allies took 47 percent of the vote nationwide while the Socialist party and allies took 38 percent, and the FN five percent — far higher than its 0.9 percent result in the first round of 2008 municipal polls.
Applauding what she said was “an exceptional vintage for the FN”, Marine Le Pen — head of the anti-immigration, anti-EU party — said the polls marked the “end of the bipolarisation of the political scene”.
Although the FN had been expected to do well, the first round results were far better than expected.
FN candidates came ahead in several key towns and cities that will put them in pole position in the second round on March 30.
In the former coal-mining town of Henin-Beaumont in northern France, Steve Briois went a step further and achieved 50.3 percent, an absolute majority which made him the outright winner and mayor.
Under municipal election rules in France, any candidate who gets more than 50 percent is declared the winner and there is no need for a second round.
The FN hopes to claim the mayorship of 10 to 15 mid-sized town after the second round, and if it achieves that, it will have beaten its previous record in 1997 when it had four mayors.
The Socialists immediately responded to the surge of the FN by acknowledging that some voters had registered their discontent with current government policies.
“Some voters expressed their concerns, and even their doubts, by abstaining or through their vote,” Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.
Turnout was dismally low at around 38 percent — a record for French municipal elections.
Ayrault called on voters to rally in the second round to block the “advance of the FN”, in a mirror of 2002 presidential elections when then FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round, prompting the Socialist Party to urge support for centre-right candidate Jacques Chirac.
“Where the National Front is in a situation where it could win the second round, all democratic and Republican forces have the responsibility to create the conditions to stop it from doing so,” he said.
The leader of the UMP party meanwhile called on those who had voted for the FN to “carry over their vote” onto UMP candidates in the second round.
Jean-Francois Cope predicted a “big victory” for his party in the second round, in a sign that corruption scandals that have affected the UMP as well as former president Nicolas Sarkozy had little impact.
In the French capital, the UMP was encouraged by an unexpected lead won by former Sarkozy minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who is competing against Anne Hidalgo, the daughter of Spanish immigrants, in a fierce battle that will see Paris get its first ever female mayor.
Hidalgo had largely been tipped as the favourite, but the results instead gave Kosciusko-Morizet a handy advantage going into the second round.
The mayorship of the French capital is the most high profile of municipal elections that will produce over 36,000 new mayors for villages, towns and cities across France.
And while very few of these will be from the FN, the Sunday results are a remarkable turnaround for a party that, at the time of the last municipals, was mired in financial crisis and internal bickering.
Le Pen took over the FN leadership in 2011 and set about broadening the appeal of a party regarded as taboo by many voters in light of her father’s repeated convictions for Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred.
As well as trying to “detoxify” the FN’s image, she has attempted to make it less of a single-issue party by campaigning on unemployment, costs of living and crime.
Past FN attempts at running local councils have often failed as a result of the eccentric personalities involved, but Le Pen has been eager to show that the party is capable of prudent governance.
“We want to become apparent as a big local political force,” Le Pen said Sunday.
France’s Front National swept to victory over the country’s mainstream centre-right opposition in a closely watched local election on Sunday in a vote widely seen as presaging big advances by the far-right party in next year’s European and municipal elections.
In the decisive second round of the poll for a departmental council seat representing Brignoles, a town in the south of France, the FN candidate comfortably defeated his rival from the UMP, the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, by 54 per cent to 46 per cent.
The knockout blow came despite calls from President François Hollande’s Socialist party for its supporters and other leftist voters to rally behind the UMP candidate in a bid to block the FN. The left’s candidate in the poll, the incumbent Communist, was easily knocked out in the first round of the election last weekend.
Marine Le Pen, FN leader, called the vote “a great victory”. She cautioned that it was only a local by-election, but added: “This shows a desire for change among the French people, who are making their voices heard, who are mobilising. It augurs towns gained and hundreds, maybe thousands of municipal councillors [for the FN in next March’s local elections].’
The FN, riding on a wave of recession-fuelled disaffection with the two mainstream parties, is mounting its biggest campaign to date to make gains in both the local elections and the European elections that follow in May.
Last week an opinion poll for the first time put the FN ahead in the running for the European poll, with 24 per cent backing the party, giving it a two-point lead over the UMP and five points over the Socialist party.
Manuel Valls, the interior minister, told the Financial Times in an interview last week, that it was possible the FN would emerge as the leading party in the European elections.
Ms Le Pen, a charismatic figure, is seeking to take advantage of the record low popularity of Mr Hollande – a poll on Sunday showed his approval rating at 26 per cent – and deep national anxiety over high unemployment and an economy struggling to emerge from recession.
Jean-Francois Copé, who is currently president of the UMP, blamed the FN victory in Brignoles on the “disastrous” leadership of country by the left.
But the FN has also taken advantage of disarray within the UMP over the leadership of the party.
Mr Sarkozy has signalled he is sizing up a return following his defeat by Mr Hollande last year, but a number of other senior figures, notably his former prime minister François Fillon, are jostling him for supremacy.
The FN victory also owed much to the breakdown of the “republican front”, a previously shared willingness of the UMP and Socialist party to back each other in straight fights with the far-right. The UMP has abandoned the principle and leftist voters also appear increasingly reluctant to follow it, despite appeals from socialist leaders.
The first secretary of the Socialist party, Harlem Désir, said the Brignoles result showed the “overwhelming necessity for the left to unite” for the municipal elections. – FT
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