France's mainstream political parties
were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the
Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the
far-right party.
The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right
Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president
Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European
elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the
eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising
taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity.
A poll
published last week suggested the FN could emerge as the best-supported
party in the European elections with 24 percent of those asked declaring
themselves ready to back the party led by Marine Le Pen, the daughter
of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.
That
shock survey was followed on Sunday by a spectacular victory for the FN
in a local by-election in Brignoles, where FN candidate Laurent Lopez
claimed 53.9 percent of the vote in a run-off against the UMP candidate.
"The
left and the mainstream right are blaming each other for what is
happening, but the reality is they've both been knocked sideways," said
Nonna Mayer, the Research Director at the National Research Centre CNRS.
"Neither of them know what to do."
There were particular, local
factors in Brignoles which influenced the outcome of a vote being held
for the third time, the result having been judged too close to stand on
two previous occasions, when the run-off was between the FN and the
Communist Party.
The southeastern town has struggled with high
unemployment since the closure of local aluminium mines in the 1990s and
the gloomy economic backdrop has exacerbated tensions between
established residents and a large community of North African immigrants,
creating fertile ground for the FN in a region where it traditionally
does better than elsewhere in France.
But the scale of the victory
for Lopez was nevertheless widely interpreted as an indicator of how
the FN is capitalising on current voter concerns to appeal to a broader
slice of the electorate than ever before.
A smartly-dressed former
businessman, Lopez, 48, is the perfect embodiment of the more
voter-friendly image that the FN has projected since Marine Le Pen took
over from her controversial father at the head of the party in 2011.
Harder to treat as a pariah party
The
pledges to end net immigration, most controversially by ripping up
family reunion rules, and to begin moves to pull France out of the
European Union, remain in place.
But the FN is now far from being
a one-issue party, notably making its voice heard on education to the
extent that it has recently been able to announce the creation of a
network of supporters amongst teachers - an unthinkable development a
decade ago.
Marine Le Pen, has worked hard to dispel the image of the party as fundamentally racist.
She
has expelled activists who make bigoted public statements and the FN
lists in next year's municipal elections will include a handful of
ethnic minority candidates.
All of which is making it harder for
the mainstream parties to prevent the FN from winning more than a
handful of elected posts by treating it as a pariah party and urging
their voters to cast their ballots tactically to keep them out of power,
an approach referred to as the "Republican Front".
"I think we
can safely say the Republican Front is now dead," Marine Le Pen declared
after Sunday's triumph in Brignoles, and her opponents acknowledged
that she was probably right.
"It just doesn't work, voters don't
like being told who to vote for," said Thierry Mandon, the spokesman for
the Socialists' parliamentary party.
Despite the current disarray
of the mainstream parties, the CNRS's Mayer still believes the recent
upturn in the fortunes of the FN remains primarily a protest phenomenon.
"The
change of leadership has given the party a slightly slicker image, but
for most French people, it remains an extreme right party founded on
racist ideas which is incapable of governing," Mayer told AFP.
"Marine
Le Pen does have a better image than her father. Unlike him she is not
associated with the legacy of the second world war and anti-semitism.
"Local
factors played heavily in their favour in Brignoles. On a national
level there is enormous disappointment after a year of the Socialists
back in power, and the issues of crime and insecurity are beginning to
weigh heavily in the national debate, which plays in the FN's favour.
"But
don't forget that, in the municipals, the FN will have candidates in
one town in six at most. It is not as strong as it pretends to be."
