Good news from France, as the Front National continues to make impressive progress in establishing itself as the new third force in French politics.
Less than two months before the European elections, in which the Front National is expected to run neck and neck with the establishment right UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire), leaving the ruling Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste – PS) a poor third, the FN has taken control of twelve town halls under a voting system much less favourable to it than the system which will apply in the Euros on 25th May (France votes on a Sunday, as do most continental countries, who view our tradition of holding elections on a working day as eccentric!)
Whereas elections to the European Parliament take place under a form of proportional representation, other elections in France are held under a two round elimination system, which is (probably intentionally) disadvantageous to radical parties outside the establishment consensus. It works like this.
Unless a candidate polls more than 50% of the votes in the first round, the lower placed candidates are eliminated, and there is a run off the next Sunday. The first round of the local elections took place on 23rd March, the second following on 30th March, except in those few towns where the first round was decisive.
Historically, whenever a candidate from the FN has gone through to the second round, the system parties such as the UMP and the PS have put aside their supposed “differences” to gang up against the patriotic candidate in a “republican front”.
That trick no longer works so well, for a mixture of good reasons and bad. The good reason is that there are genuine patriots in the ranks of the UMP, who will not line up with the Socialists against the FN for ideological reasons.
The bad reason is that the UMP is so riven with internecine hatreds that in some areas it has splintered into rival lists, which cannot agree on anything, including which candidate to support in the second round if their preferred candidate does not survive the first!
What is more, the tactic is beginning to help the FN as much as it hurts it, by showing the French people that the FN is right when it says that the supposed “differences” between the system parties are superficial, and they are all really no more than aspects of a single establishment party, which quickly comes together when faced with real opposition.
In the result, the FN took the depressed industrial town of Hénin-Beaumont without the need for a run-off, polling just over 50% of the votes in the first round, adding eleven more towns in the second, including the Seventh Arrondissement of Marseilles, the second (and very enriched) city of France, where the indigenous French are rapidly being reduced to a minority (think Birmingham by the sea, and with better weather!).
The FN now controls twelve town halls and has 1,546 elected representatives at a level equivalent to borough councillors in England, and 459 at a level equivalent to county councillors.
What is more, contrary to some opinion, the FN has achieved all these things while remaining true to the essence of its patriotic and openly nationalist ideology, though sensibly presenting itself in a modern, media friendly fashion.
Unfortunately, some few, but very influential opinion formers in France have reacted to the complete failure of Socialist President François Hollande, the most unpopular and least respected President of France under the Fifth Republic, by turning to what we call neo-conservatism, but the French (who are more intellectually rigorous, or perhaps simply more intellectually honest than Anglo-Saxons) call neo-liberalism, a combination of dogmatic belief in the free market with a most un-Gaullist drift into the orbit of American led interventionist foreign policy.
The PS has itself now apparently turned in a Blairite direction by choosing as prime minister Manuel Valls, an open admirer of the repulsive war criminal, willing executioner of American and Ziocon imperialist projects, and fantastically greedy self-enricher who, to our shame, was three times prime minister of the United Kingdom.
The FN rejects that option comprehensively, noting in its official press release of 31st March that the new PS administration is morbidly fascinated to the point of obsession by neo-liberalism, and hell bent on subjecting France to the rule of alien financial interests and dogmatic market fundamentalism at the cost of its sovereignty. The PS has nothing to offer France, says the FN, but austerity, unemployment, public debt, unchecked criminality and mass immigration.
We should wish our comrades and counterparts in the FN well and hope that under the inspirational leadership of the admirable Marine Le Pen, it emerges as the largest single party in France when the votes are counted on 25th May.
Why it is that an authentically nationalist alternative to the system flourishes in France, while in England we have in effect only the well-intentioned but ideologically unformed and confused UKIP (as will become even more clear after the votes are counted here in May to anyone who still harbours any illusions about the family business of an one-eyed twice bankrupt) is a big subject for another article on another day.
Originally published at the website of the British Democratic Party.
Less than two months before the European elections, in which the Front National is expected to run neck and neck with the establishment right UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire), leaving the ruling Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste – PS) a poor third, the FN has taken control of twelve town halls under a voting system much less favourable to it than the system which will apply in the Euros on 25th May (France votes on a Sunday, as do most continental countries, who view our tradition of holding elections on a working day as eccentric!)
Whereas elections to the European Parliament take place under a form of proportional representation, other elections in France are held under a two round elimination system, which is (probably intentionally) disadvantageous to radical parties outside the establishment consensus. It works like this.
Unless a candidate polls more than 50% of the votes in the first round, the lower placed candidates are eliminated, and there is a run off the next Sunday. The first round of the local elections took place on 23rd March, the second following on 30th March, except in those few towns where the first round was decisive.
Historically, whenever a candidate from the FN has gone through to the second round, the system parties such as the UMP and the PS have put aside their supposed “differences” to gang up against the patriotic candidate in a “republican front”.
That trick no longer works so well, for a mixture of good reasons and bad. The good reason is that there are genuine patriots in the ranks of the UMP, who will not line up with the Socialists against the FN for ideological reasons.
The bad reason is that the UMP is so riven with internecine hatreds that in some areas it has splintered into rival lists, which cannot agree on anything, including which candidate to support in the second round if their preferred candidate does not survive the first!
What is more, the tactic is beginning to help the FN as much as it hurts it, by showing the French people that the FN is right when it says that the supposed “differences” between the system parties are superficial, and they are all really no more than aspects of a single establishment party, which quickly comes together when faced with real opposition.
In the result, the FN took the depressed industrial town of Hénin-Beaumont without the need for a run-off, polling just over 50% of the votes in the first round, adding eleven more towns in the second, including the Seventh Arrondissement of Marseilles, the second (and very enriched) city of France, where the indigenous French are rapidly being reduced to a minority (think Birmingham by the sea, and with better weather!).
The FN now controls twelve town halls and has 1,546 elected representatives at a level equivalent to borough councillors in England, and 459 at a level equivalent to county councillors.
What is more, contrary to some opinion, the FN has achieved all these things while remaining true to the essence of its patriotic and openly nationalist ideology, though sensibly presenting itself in a modern, media friendly fashion.
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| President Hollande on his way to a non-political meeting. |
The PS has itself now apparently turned in a Blairite direction by choosing as prime minister Manuel Valls, an open admirer of the repulsive war criminal, willing executioner of American and Ziocon imperialist projects, and fantastically greedy self-enricher who, to our shame, was three times prime minister of the United Kingdom.
The FN rejects that option comprehensively, noting in its official press release of 31st March that the new PS administration is morbidly fascinated to the point of obsession by neo-liberalism, and hell bent on subjecting France to the rule of alien financial interests and dogmatic market fundamentalism at the cost of its sovereignty. The PS has nothing to offer France, says the FN, but austerity, unemployment, public debt, unchecked criminality and mass immigration.
We should wish our comrades and counterparts in the FN well and hope that under the inspirational leadership of the admirable Marine Le Pen, it emerges as the largest single party in France when the votes are counted on 25th May.
Why it is that an authentically nationalist alternative to the system flourishes in France, while in England we have in effect only the well-intentioned but ideologically unformed and confused UKIP (as will become even more clear after the votes are counted here in May to anyone who still harbours any illusions about the family business of an one-eyed twice bankrupt) is a big subject for another article on another day.
Originally published at the website of the British Democratic Party.
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