Mikeuk

Le Pen and French far Right achieve record popularity
Kim Willsher in Paris
(Filed: 21/05/2006)


As the French government tears itself apart amid a trumped-up corruption scandal, and the socialist opposition fails to capitalise on the chaos, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-Right National Front (FN), has gained record levels of support - without saying a word in public.

According to a survey in the news magazine Le Point last week, 22 per cent of the French population has a "favourable opinion" of Mr Le Pen - up five per cent from the previous month.

The rating is far higher than the 16 per cent popularity which Mr Le Pen scored in polls four years ago, just before the presidential elections in which he shocked France by beating the socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, in the first round. He lost to Jacques Chirac in the second round and political commentators insisted his success was a blip that would never happen again.

"His ideas have never been so popular," said his daughter and likely successor, Marine. She is "very, very optimistic" about her father's chances in next year's presidential election. "He will be in the second round, the only question is who he will be against," Miss Le Pen said.

"It's a case of people realising that reality is reflecting what we have been saying for the past 30 years. It is also because the political system is caving in on itself."

The swing to the extreme Right has been attributed to a series of events, during a period of economic gloom, that have crippled the government: last autumn's rioting in the suburbs; student violence over a proposed employment law; and now the Clearstream dirty tricks scandal.

Polls have shown the FN relentlessly on the rise since last November's violence in the immigrant ghettos on the outskirts of France's biggest cities. In October, eight per cent of French people said they would vote for Mr Le Pen's party.

By December that had risen to 11 per cent, and by February it was 12 per cent. In March, at the height of the student riots, would-be FN voters increased to 13 per cent and in April they were 14 per cent.

Before 2002, the highest point for the FN, which was created in 1972, was in the mid-1990s, when the party took over six mayoral posts, capitalising on increasing concerns over immigration.

Supporters believe that Mr Le Pen's silence over the Clearstream scandal has helped to distinguish him from the tarnished crowd.

Most critics of the French government have had a field day over the scandal, which has pitted President Chirac and the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, against Nicolas Sarkozy, the foreign minister - all members of the same right-of-centre party.

But Mr Le Pen has made a point of keeping out of the political mudslinging, telling friends that Clearstream is nothing more than a "sordid masquerade".

"There's no reason for me to attack these people with my little hammer when they're smashing each other up with a road drill," he said privately, according to Le Figaro newspaper.

Both Mr Sarkozy and Mr Chirac have attempted to win over FN supporters, offering increasingly hardline immigration policies.

But Miss Le Pen dismissed Mr Sarkozy's tough new immigration bill, which was passed by the lower house of parliament last week, and his declaration that foreigners in France could either "like it or leave".

She said: "Either he has changed and is convinced by our ideas, in which case why insult us, or he is obsessed with getting into power no matter what. "Personally I believe it is the latter." Pollsters who have been studying voting intentions - separate from popularity ratings - suggest it would be unwise to write off the FN leader in next year's vote.

In April - before the Clearstream scandal - a survey by the Sofres polling company predicted that Mr Le Pen could finish third in the first round of voting for the presidency.

It put him behind Mr Sarkozy and the Socialist contender Ségolène Royal, but ahead of Mr de Villepin.

ryansoton

Reminds me of our recent local election where the government and oppisition parties chose to keep quiet on immigration and the bnp romped home in thier target seats

Mikeuk

There are similarities, but the appeal of the FN is much wider and more deeply-rooted than that of the BNP.

There is also a long tradition of intellecual support for the radical right in France, which is totally lacking here.

Tashry

The FN have used "Euronationalism" for longer than the BNP, and thus are more popular.

Euronationalism = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronationalism

andypandy

I remember reading an article in the "Economist" around 1982/3 writing about the increasing support for this rather unknown character, called Le Pen. The article was headed "at a stroke of Le Pen" It was commenting on the sudden victory in a number of councils for FN candidates.

Now, 20 odd years later, they represent over 1 in 5 French voters (more if the muslim vote was excluded and non-muslim vote re-calulated).

Is this this the BNP in 20 years? Where will UKIP be? (probably still arguing over leadership, manfesto policies, image, and lack of help from MEPs at election times)

Mikeuk

Le Pen was then little known, if at all, in the UK, but he has had a long political career in France. During the 1950s he first entered the Chamber of Deputies as a Poujadist. He and Poujade afterwards fell out badly.

Le Pen served as a paratrooper in the conflict in Algeria, one of many historical threads woven into the tapestry of French right-wing politics. On the whole he has avoided personal identification with the various far-right and Catholic movements which became associated with Vichy, although their remnants are still to be found on the fringe of the FN.

The sight of senior FN politicians wrapped in the drapeau bleu-blanc-rouge, and singing La Marseillaise may seem par for the course to UK observers. However, an earlier generation of French rightists, who rejected all republican symbols, would have been appalled.

Unlike the BNP, the FN does not exclude 'non-white' French citizens. and a number have risen to positions of moderate prominence within the party.

Le Pen endorsed the BNP, during the last European Parliamentary elections, a move which did not meet with universal approbation within his party.

conan

PARIS (Reuters) - Youths clashed with police in a Paris suburb overnight and attacked the home of the local mayor in disturbances one police union said were the worst since a wave of urban riots shook France in November.

French media said some 150 youths armed with baseball bats fought around 250 police for four hours in Montfermeil north of Paris after the arrest of a youth suspected of attacking a bus driver, an incident witnessed by the local mayor Xavier Lemoine.

Youths smashed windows, hurled two petrol bombs at the town hall and stoned the mayor's home, the media reports said.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060530/...nce_clashes_dc[/url]

Edward Longshanks

Vive Le Front National et John Marie Le Pen! 8)

adrianwainer

Allez the Cheese eating surrender monkeys!

Mikeuk wrote
The French "intelectual" class is that low, they could crawl under a snake's ass in a wagon rut, whilst wearing a top hat, they never found a psychopath they could not admire from Hitler to Mao to Pol Pott to Saddam Hussein. The reality about Le Pen is that Chirac just loves this guy because he is just that far out of his tree that he manages to hover up votes that could go to a genuine centreist opposition party whilst just not respectable enough to pose a practical threat to Chirac. Funnily enough the so called socialists and the so called right of Chirac have pushed French society so far, that Le Pen unpleasant as he is, is looking quite moderate and respectable compared to the socialists and Chirac's lot and may well be a future President of France, depending on what our French Maghrebi Muslim "friends" get up.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

When dealing with the French talk quietly and carry a big stick, preferably a very big stick with Trident MIRV ICBM nuclear weapon written on it.

adrianwainer

Still cheering the Heinkel He-111s bombing London in 1940?

Edward Longshanks
wrote

Vichy French Premier Pierrre Laval meets Axis partner Der Fuhrer Adolf Hitler

and "hurrah for the Blackshirts" to you mate!

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer