Two months after millions of French people mounted a mass demonstration of national unity in horrified reaction to the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket terrorist killings in Paris, the dangerous, divisive National Front party is once more riding high, reports The Financial Times.
The anti-EU, anti-immigrant FN, excluded from the January march, is set to win the biggest share of the vote in regional elections this month, according to polls that show it taking a third of votes in the first round. An increasingly confident Marine Le Pen, the party’s charismatic leader, declared to the Financial Times this week: “It is the Front’s moment.”
President François Hollande, his approval ratings again sliding after a post-Charlie boost, is braced for a stinging defeat for his ruling Socialist party. The centre-right UMP, once more led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, has signally failed to provide coherent opposition to a weak government.
Even with a strong showing in this month’s poll, the FN will still have only marginal representation in parliament and local government. But Ms Le Pen has her sights firmly fixed on the presidential election in 2017. After winning almost 18 per cent of the first round vote in 2012, polls now show her poised to reach the second round next time, as her father Jean-Marie achieved in 2002. The difference is that, while he was trounced in the run-off by Jacques Chirac, it is no longer unimaginable that Ms Le Pen could win. At least one poll has shown her beating Mr Hollande in a second round face-off.
A Le Pen presidency is still an outside bet. The French centre would rally against her. A nascent economic recovery could soften FN support. But, as the far-left Syriza party showed in Greece, radical movements in Europe are capable of riding to power on a deep disaffection with the political mainstream.