France swings to the Right: The Times: worth noting the top comment online first: How is it that any party or movement that seeks to question, confront or change the endless, mindless drift of our doomed European societies towards an ever greater destructive statism that is unravelling everything that once gave us character, pride, responsibility and independence is automatically labelled by our thoughtless lemming-like media as far right and by implication beyond the pale. Can it be other than an admission that we have now become a far left dictatorship where only one party line is permitted and everyone must sing to the same tune? 24.03.14 The National Front of Marine Le Pen claimed victory last night after French voters punished the ruling Socialists in a first round of local elections that saw the far right come within range of capturing two or three cities. In the first test since François Hollande took the presidency from Nicolas Sarkozy two years ago, voters used elections to 36,000 village, town and city councils to vent their fury with the most unpopular national administration since the 1950s. The Socialists were in danger of losing to the conservatives in cities including Angers, Pau, Amiens, Périgueux, Anglet, Narbonne, Brive, Metz, Toulouse and Saint-Etienne. The Socialists still appeared likely to save Paris, although Anne Hidalgo, deputy to the outgoing Mayor, was beaten by Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the conservative candidate. In the run-off, Ms Hidalgo will benefit from the Greens party vote, which should ensure her victory. The centre-right Union for a Popular Movement — Mr Sarkozy’s party — made the biggest national gains in a vote marked by record low turn-out of 62 per cent but its hopes of reaping dozens of key councils in next Sunday’s run-off could be thwarted by the strong showing for the Front National. The Front captured outright the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, the fief of Ms Le Pen, and it shook the political establishment with strong results in the Mediterranean belt, leading the field in Avignon and Beziers. A ny candidate who gets more than 50 per cent is declared the winner and there is no need for a second round. Ms Le Pen said: “We are seeing tonight the end of two-party politics in France. The Front has arrived as a powerful independent force in French political life. This is one of the revelations of this election.” However the Front, which contested only some 500 of the 4,000 larger towns, could still face a struggle to convert its first round advances into mayoral seats because of calls from the Socialists and UMP to vote for one-another’s candidates to block the Front in the run-off. “In the places where the Front is in a position to win in the second round, all democratic forces must block them,” said Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Socialist Prime Minister. Overall, leftwing parties took 43 percent of the vote while the mainstream right took 48 percent with the FN at seven percent. This was nevertheless far higher than the 0.9 percent which the Front won in the first round of the last council polls, in 2008, when the party was at a low ebb under Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of the present leader and founder of the party. The big question in the run-off next Sunday will be how far Socialist and UMP voters will be prepared to back one another’s candidates against the Front in so-called “triangular” votes with all three parties in the run-off. The Front won several cities in the 1980s and 90s but currently controls none of the country’s 36,000 village, town and city councils. The swing towards the Front, which had been presaged by opinion polls for months, was a reflection of both rejection of the establishment parties and Ms Le Pen’s success in detoxifying the image racism that long clung to her father’s party. Frédéric Lefebvre, a former minister under Mr Sarkozy, said the tide or support for the UMP, was the “boomerang effect of the political misdeeds of the Hollande administration.” Ms Le Pen remained cautious but said that she trusted voters to follow their instincts, not the calculations of the two big parties, which she calls UMPS, a combination of both their initials. “The French do not like being told how to vote,” she said. Mainstream party leaders fear that the so-called “republican pact” to block the Front, observed since its rise in the 1980s, could fall victim to contempt among conservative voters for the taxing-and-spending leftwing administration and its failure to inject life into the anaemic economy. Under Jean-Francois Copé, Mr Sarkozy’s successor as party leader, the UMP has moved closer to the far right. Mr Copé thanked voters for the big swing towards his party and predicted a “big victory” in the second round. Frédéric Lefebvre, a former minister under Mr Sarkozy, said the tide or support for the UMP, was the “boomerang effect of the political misdeeds of the Hollande administration.” The strong UMP vote is a sign that corruption scandals that have affected the UMP and Mr Sarkozy had little impact. The party was also relieved by a strong vote in Marseille, the second city, for Jean-Claude Gaudin, the veteran UMP mayor who was facing a tough challenge from the locally popular Socialist candidate.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 16:01:08 +0000
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