One wonders if the Socialists will try to take a page from the Greeks and ban the French nationalist party as a “criminal organization” before they get booted from office by the electorate.
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.
Across Europe, the globalists and transnationalists are all but finished democratically. From the UK to Eastern Europe, the trend is clear. Now the question is if they will go gracefully or otherwise, turning to violent, anti-democratic tactics while incessantly screaming “fascist” and “neo-Nazi” at the populist parties.
In the meantime, there isn’t any mystery about the growing mass appeal of Marine Le Pen and the Front National:
“I will negotiate over the points on which there can be no compromise. If the result is inadequate, I will call for withdrawal. Europe is just a great bluff. On one side there is the immense power of sovereign peoples, and on the other side are a few technocrats.”
Asked if she intended to pull France of the euro immediately, she hesitated for a second or two and then said: “Yes, because the euro blocks all economic decisions. France is not a country that can accept tutelage from Brussels.”
As I wrote in June, the Front has been scoring highest in core Socialist
cantons, clear evidence that it is breaking out of its Right-wing
enclaves to become the mass movement of the white working class.
Vive le franc! The Euro is finished once France turns against it.