Since the French parliamentary elections in early June, which returned a clear socialist majority, several ministers under former President Nicolas Sarkozy have begun to openly criticise Sarkozy's tactic of courting the far right with anti-immigrant sentiments in both that election and May's presidential election.
Their target is Patrick Buisson, architect of the strategy, a political journalist who now runs a public opinion consultancy called Publifact, which was paid by the previous presidency to analyse opinion polls. But Buisson's role went further, including the formulation of the election strategy which has now divided the UMP.
Former government spokeswoman Nathalie Koscuisko-Morizet, former finance minister François Baroin and former health minister Roselyne Bachelot are among those who have recently spoken out against a strategy that appeared to stigmatise immigrants and reinforce ideas of inferiority and superiority of various cultures and civilizations.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
These ideas are espoused by the Front National (FN), but also by a faction of the UMP which began to organise itself after Sarkozy's party was defeated in regional elections in 2010, and which calls itself the Droite Populaire, or Populist Right.
Joël Gombin, see photo above right, a doctoral student writing a thesis on the FN’s electorate at the University of Picardy, has examined this turn to the right in the party that had ruled France for the past ten years. He concludes it will prove to be damaging to the UMP, not just in the short term but also in the medium- and long term, because it has legitimised a party which up to now had had pariah status. He explains his analysis to Mediapart.
Mediapart: We saw a big defeat for the Populist Right, which represents this turn to the right, in the parliamentary elections.
J.G.: You just have to look at the constituencies where the UMP candidate was part of this Populist Right – in fact this could be extended to others elected on the Right, the Populist Right is just an indicator. On average the FN is losing fewer votes [in these constituencies] than other parties – only 38 % between the two rounds, against 47% in other constituencies.
Some of these constituencies are particularly symbolic:
– the 4th constituency in Vaucluse, [in south-east France, formerly the constituency of Thierry Mariani, one of the key figures in the Populist Right] where the far-right vote increased by 3% while the UMP vote fell 47%;
– the 3rd in Vaucluse, which elected FN candidate Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (1) against UMP candidate Jean-Michel Ferrand [also a figure in the Populist Right], where the far-right vote increased by 17 % and the UMP vote fell 18 % ;
– the 2nd in Bouches-du-Rhône [in the south-east of France] with Dominique Tian [another figure in the Populist Right], where the far-right vote fell 22% but the UMP vote fell 24%;
– the 1st in Pyrénées-Orientales [in the south of France, in a contest between a prominent FN candidate and another figure in the Populist Right], where the far-right vote fell 23 % and the UMP vote fell 21 % ;
– and the 2nd in Vaucluse, where the far-right vote fell 24 % and the UMP vote fell 17 %.
This means that the total vote for the Right and Far Right has indeed become more significant, but in favour of the FN, not the UMP. So this tactic leads to the FN leading the game in the medium term.
In the south-east of France, the FN is already ahead of the UMP in a number of constituencies. For example, in the 16th constituency of Bouches-du-Rhône, the right-wing vote has become an anti-feft, FN vote. In Hénin-Beaumont [in northern France] the Right scored 8 % – practically all its traditional electorate voted for the FN.
Mediapart: Yet the Populist Right's argument has always been to present itself as a bulwark against the FN, saying that certain subjects should not be left to the FN...
J.G.: There are two limits to this 'bulwark' argument today. Firstly, the Populist Right can only be a bulwark if there is still something to distinguish it from the FN. Their only difference is on the economy – those elected from the Populist Right are neo-liberals. But they do not campaign on this theme and they have a significant convergence with the FN on their anti-taxation, Poujadist (2) position. And then, experience shows it doesn’t work, as we have just demonstrated.
--------------------------
1: Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is one of two FN Members of Parliament elected to Parliament in the June elections. At the age of 22 she is the youngest MP, but she is best known as the grand-daughter of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. Her aunt, Marine Le Pen, who was the FN’s presidential candidate, now leads the party.
2: Pierre Poujade, after whom this political position is named, spearheaded a shopkeepers' anti-tax protest movement in the south-west of France in the mid-1950s.
UMP 'has boxed itself into a corner'
Mediapart: What are the consequences of this turn to the Right?
J.G.: It has legitimised the FN. Those who are undoing the demonization [of the FN] are not the FN themselves but the UMP, which has lowered the moral barrier for the FN. As when Nicolas Sarkozy says that Marine Le Pen is "compatible with the Republic", and Henri Guaino [Sarkozy's former chief advisor] says there "there should not be a Republican front against a party that has been validated by the Republic", or Gérard Longuet [former defence minister on the right of the UMP] considers that Marine Le Pen is a "legitimate contact" for the UMP.
Mediapart: Is it a failure for Patrick Buisson?
J.G.: Nicolas Sarkozy was a tactician but Patrick Buisson is a strategist. Unlike the UMP candidate, who was focused on [the elections in] 2012, Patrick Buisson played several hands, for a merger between the FN and the UMP in the long term. Everything leads us to believe this.
Mediapart: How has the FN managed to make a breakthrough to the point of becoming the main right-wing vote in certain areas?
J.G.: The FN has a great ability to build client-like relationships or, in any case, highly personalised relationships. It has nothing to offer – no local council, no jobs or housing to give away, no public policies to promise. A number of elected representatives on the Left or the Right have used this ability to offer material or symbolic benefits in electoral transactions. Now this practice is running out of steam.
The FN's approach gives it something that cannot be appropriated – distance. Voting for the FN is a way of symbolically keeping one’s distance from the Other – immigrants or certain social groups above or below oneself. Even though the FN is a very radical party, it plays very well on different identities, including local ones with its strong anti-Parisian stand.
Mediapart: Is the most surprising thing its breakthrough in the west of France, where it had been almost absent?
J.G.: The FN vote is becoming more a vote of the periphery, the outer urban perimeter and rural areas, and so essentially of the west of France. This change is the result of urban spread. It is very perceptible in Île-de-France [the region around Paris], which used to be one of the regions which voted the most in favour of the FN and is today the region that votes the least for the FN. The FN vote has moved further from Paris, following the spread of the Paris conglomeration.
It has now gone beyond the Paris region and is present in the south of Oise, the south of Aisne and in upper Normandy [where those areas border Île-de-France]. This explains the cases of Jean-François Mancel [UMP] in Oise, who barely managed to win his seat, of [Sarkozy's former education minister] Xavier Bertrand in Aisne, of Marcel Bonnot [UMP] in Franche-Comté or of François-Michel Gonnot [UMP] who was beaten by Patrice Carvalho [from the Far-Left Front de Gauche] in the 6th constituency in Oise.
These scores cannot be attributed only to people moving into these regions. It is also a consequence of such changes on the countryside, on living conditions, housing, the local job market and access to public goods and services.
In the south this is a phenomenon that has been known for at least 30 years. The boom in the FN vote there cannot be directly explained by people moving in, who are broadly speaking senior managers. It is above all the consequence of their arrival: an increase in inequality, rising property prices and changes in the conditions of access to employment and housing.
Mediapart: Do the FN and UMP electorates overlap?
J.G.: They remain distinct because the FN’s is much more a popular electorate – the upper layers of the lower class, the upper layers of the middle class and those who, from a subjective point of view, are afraid of slipping down the ladder. The type of housing has a very significant effect on the FN vote. They are present in areas where there are houses, while the Left is more present on the big housing estates.
Mediapart: Has the “de-demonization” of the party under Marine Le Pen - who is claimed to have softened the FN's image - had an effect?
J.G.: This “de-demonization” is not a cause of the FN vote, it is a useful justification for voters. People have to explain their vote if someone puts a microphone in front of them. The first thing that comes into their heads is what they have heard on television. Nowadays they repeat the catch-phrase: "We vote for Marine Le Pen because she is different from her father." This "de-demonization" is only a new factor in a stock response.
Mediapart: The FN keeps saying it wants to blow the UMP out of the water. What will its strategy be in the coming years?
J.G.: The FN manages to nibble at the edges of the UMP vote, but everything is taking much longer than it had hoped. In Vaucluse, for example, former FN member Jacques Bompard has managed to reorganise the Right around himself – the fact that Thierry Mariani went elsewhere this year acknowledges this – but his campaign began in the 1980s.
This was an interesting experiment, but the FN cannot allow itself to wait that long, they need money. They need to win local elections to bail the party out, as they did in 1995 and 1997. So the intermediary elections, and particularly the municipal elections in 2014, are an important test for them. They face three challenges: to win; not to repeat [the experience of] 1995 (1); and not to use any old method to get re-elected.
Mediapart: What should the UMP be doing faced with the FN?
J.G.: They have boxed themselves into a corner and it will be difficult to get out. It has been proved that turning to the right has its limits. But now criticisms of the turn to the right have largely become criticisms of Jean-François Copé [current general secretary of the UMP]. The party is adrift and divided.
But the French Right is historically multi-faceted, as [political historian] René Rémond showed. Managing to create the UMP was a one-off miracle, pulled off in very specific circumstances. The party held its tongue and followed its leader, Nicolas Sarkozy. This system has failed and therefore change is called for. Whether or not it is maintained could essentially depend on the political and financial autonomy accorded to its various factions.
Mediapart: Is it possible that some elected representatives, in particular from the Populist Right, might join the FN?
J.G.: It is not very likely as far as those who have been elected are concerned. However, those who are in the same situation as Roland Chassain in the Bouches-du-Rhône [having lost in the parliamentary elections and with a very strong FN present in his constituency] could well take this step before the municipal elections.
----------------------------
1: In 1995 the FN won municipal elections hands down in three major towns in the south: Orange, Toulon and Marignane, near Marseille. But two of the three mayors were defeated in 2001, and the third, Jacques Bompard, fell out with the FN leadership and is no longer in the party.
--------------------------
English version: Sue Landau
(Editing by Michael Streeter)