Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Marine Le Pen’s Tide Is Far From Ebbing

David Gow 14th December 2015

David Gow

David Gow

Well, that’s OK then. The second round of France’s regional elections has seen the clear winner of the first, Marine Le Pen and her Front National, leave empty-handed. The FN, top in six of the 13 regions on December 6, won none. It came third in the overall poll on 27.4% compared with 40% for the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) and 32% for the incumbent socialists (PS). Worse still for Mme Le Pen, both she and her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, well ahead first time in their fiefdoms, Nord-Pas-De-Calais and Provence, fell back badly in the second round run-offs with “just” 42% and 45% respectively.

The two most visible leaders of the Far Right lost because the PS withdrew in both their regions to enable the LR to win – in a “republican front” based upon the enduring secular values of France. And, of course, this triumph of “republican values” can lead many to believe that the FN will never secure power. That MLP, even if, like her now disgraced father, Jean-Marie, in 2002, she gets into the second round of the 2017 presidential elections, she can’t and won’t win. Enough French voters will “hold their nose” – as they did with Jacques Chirac 13 years ago – and vote massively for the anti-FN candidate they excoriated in the first round. MLP is incapable of forming a broad enough front to win power, it’s said, because her brand remains toxic.

This blandly reassuring scenario has some grounding in reality. Certainly, Xavier Bertrand, the winner over MLP and ex-labour minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, took care to thank left-wing voters for aiding his success. Then, Sarkozy, who has taken LR to the right to cut the ground under MLP’s feet and guarantee his return to the Elysée in 2017, saw his “ni ni” (abstain) tactic roundly ignored. Many of his party’s supporters also voted left tactically in a bigger turnout than usual. And it is genuinely heart-warming in a Europe drifting into the arms of authoritarian xenophobes and Islamophobes to see a halt called in one of its biggest countries. MLP’s strategy of “de-demonising” the FN, to the point of throwing out her Dad, the party’s founder, in an effort to make it “normal” and hence respectable, has failed.

But she won a record 6.8m votes for her party and a record share of the vote – up more than 2% on the European elections of 2014. And this was even though her political response to the Paris attacks was ultra-nationalist and nakedly anti-Muslim – a crude denial of “republican values.” What’s more, the FN is tapping into a widespread French national depression at its economic decline – record unemployment of 3.6m – and German supremacy in Europe. There is, as elsewhere, profound alienation from globalization, mounting inequality and, not least, the political class’s accommodation – on centre-left as well as centre-right – with both. MLP is more successful at mining resentments among (white) working-class voters and winning them over, often from the Communists, than, say, Ukip or AfD.

Inevitably, MLP did not look that depressed herself on Sunday night as she reasserted the FN (and herself) as “alone against everybody else” (seul(e) contre tous) and tore into the cosy collusion between mainstream right and left – aided and abetted by the media – that had denied her victory. If France’s economic malaise continues to deepen – and the feelgood factor engendered by the stunning diplomatic success of the COP21 climate change summit rapidly evaporates as it will – then the FN retains a rich seam of actual and potential support. Simply put, it’s 40 years since the “glorious 30” years of post-war renaissance ended and there’s little to show in terms of progress. France is stuck in its “nostalgie de la boue.”


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

Fortunately, this inability to handle and overcome economic and social tensions has been recognised in the wake of Sunday’s results. These have been seen as a wake-up call. Bertrand, a wannabe LR presidential candidate, said plainly that the political class was drinking in the last chance saloon after 30 wasted years. Manuel Valls, reform-minded but ineffective premier, said: “The danger of the far right has not been removed – far from it – and I won’t forget the results of the first round and of past elections.” Francois Fillon, ex-premier under Sarkozy, said the first round gave the real sentiments of French voters. Valls made the obvious point: “We have to give people back the desire to vote for and not just against.”

This, surely, is the true lesson of the French regional elections and one that applies right across Europe – above all, for the social democratic left. Many signals point to the danger of renewed recession. The refugee crisis is far from over and could accentuate post-winter. Nationalist and extremist positions are becoming entrenched, even in the sunny uplands of “perennially” social democratic Scandinavia. The EU itself is at serious risk of disintegration in the face of growing sentiments against solidarity. This old continent, as it approaches a new year, is in sore need of real change – not talk of reforms but real measures that help restore some trust in both democratic institutions and the economy. Until that happens, it will not be OK.

David Gow

David Gow is former editor of Social Europe, editor of sceptical.scot and former German correspondent and European business editor of the Guardian.

You are here: Home / Politics / Marine Le Pen’s Tide Is Far From Ebbing

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

European Health Data Space,EHDS,Big Tech Fostering public research or boosting Big Tech?Philip Freeman and Jan Willem Goudriaan
migrant workers,non-EU Non-EU migrant workers—the ties that bindLilana Keith
ECB,European Central Bank,deposit facility How the ECB’s ‘deposit facility’ subsidises banksDavid Hollanders
migrant,Europe,workers All work and low pay—Europe’s migrant workforceAnkita Anand
art,European,prize The case for a European prize for artNed Hercock

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: housing

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s senior research manager, Hans Dubois, about the issues that feed into housing insecurity in Europe and the actions that need to be taken to address them. Together, they analyse findings from Eurofound’s recent Unaffordable and inadequate housing in Europe report, which presents data from Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents on various indicators of housing security and living conditions.


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube