National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen inherited her father Jean-Marie's self-assurance, deep voice, and the way he throws back his head and guffaws and opens his arms wide before a crowd. The vocabulary and intonations used to denounce immigration and the EU are so similar that one might mistake Marine for her father in drag. She is, her mother Pierrette says, "the absolute clone of her father".
To lead the FN to victory in France’s European elections on Sunday night, Marine Le Pen had to distance herself from the old reprobate’s racism and anti-Semitism.
Her supporters say the FN has changed, thanks to the “de-diabolisation” carried out by Marine. Detractors insist it is still on the extreme right.
“The DNA of the party remains her father’s,” says socialist old-timer Jacques Att- ali. “She’s never denounced his outrages, not even last week.”
At a cocktail party in Marseille on May 20th, Le Pen père said the lethal Ebola virus in Africa could solve the "population explosion" and Europe's "immigration problem".
“We’re dead,” Marine Le Pen said upon learning of Jean-Marie’s gaffe. Like him, she is prone to volcanic anger.
“Couldn’t you keep your mouth shut?” she shouted at him over the phone.
Jean-Marie Le Pen's racist remark turned out to be just a blip on the screen. The FN won a quarter of the vote and almost a third of France's seats in the European Parliament. Le Pen fille has exploited popular concerns about immigration and Islamic fundamentalism. She has tapped into the French distrust of globalisation, which she equates with Europe. She promises to restore a powerful, protective state as the main actor of the economy.
Every region The FN won not only its traditional strongholds of the northeast and southeast; it led the poll in 70 per cent of French departments. The party scored high in every region, including those least affected by the economic crisis and hitherto considered Europhile. The run-off in the 2017 presidential election now looks well within Le Pen’s reach.
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy attempted to lure FN voters by mimicking the far right's rhetoric on immigration. It helped legitimate the FN in the eyes of UMP voters.
Le Pen swears her party is "neither left nor right". Polit- ical scientist Pascal Perrineau, an expert on the FN, says France has entered a "tripolar" system, pitting the left and traditional right against the FN's "national populism".
Exit polls showed the FN has drawn working class voters and the unemployed away from the Socialist Party (PS). With just under 14 per cent of the vote, the PS suffered its worst defeat in a national election.
All left-wing parties combined received less than a third of the vote. Commentators are asking how French president François Hollande can govern for three more years with so little popular support.
In a five-minute television statement last night, Hollande evoked the “painful truth” of the European elections. He interpreted the results to mean “distrust of Europe . . . of government parties . . . of politics”, and said they also showed “fear of the decline of France, of globalisation”. Dissatisfaction Sixty-nine per cent of FN voters and 34 per cent of the electorate told pollsters they voted first and foremost to express dissatisfaction with Hollande. He did not acknowledge that his unpopularity was a chief cause of the debacle.
“Europe has become illegible . . . distant . . . incomprehensible, even for states,” he said.
The conservative UMP too has been dynamited by the FN’s victory. Party leader Jean-François Copé is fighting to keep his position, but the party barons have it in for him.
“The UMP’s credibility has been damaged,” said François Fillon, the former prime minister and Copé’s erstwhile rival for the party leadership.
Alluding to the “Bygmalion” financial scandal involving Copé, Fillon added: “We need profound change now.”
Hollande will today travel to Brussels for the European Council meeting that will choose the next president of the European Commission.
Even before this latest election defeat, a high-ranking Irish official lamented: “Where are the French? We miss the French voice in Europe.”
To the chagrin of France’s mainstream parties, henceforward, Marine Le Pen is likely to be the most influential French voice in Europe.