Terror in France has Marine Le Pen on the verge of a big victory
WAR and terror shatter morale. But times of national stress also tend to reward incumbents. Like George Bush after September 11th, France’s president, François Hollande, has enjoyed a spectacular poll bounce since the Paris terrorist attacks on November 13th. Previously, he held the record for the worst presidential approval ratings under the French Fifth Republic. Now, Mr Hollande’s ratings have leapt by 20-22 percentage points, returning for the first time to the level he enjoyed shortly after his election in 2012.
The first real post-terror test of French public opinion, however, will take place on December 6th, the first stage of a two-round election for regional governments. Polls suggest that first-round bragging rights will belong not to Mr Hollande or his Socialist Party, nor even to the centre-right opposition, but to Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front (FN). She is standing for election as president of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, a region in northern France of 6m people.
Europe’s triple crises—Greece, refugees, and terrorism—have played straight into the hands of nationalists on the continent, from Poland to Switzerland. No other big western European country, though, is witnessing a phenomenon quite like the FN. Last year, the party already made waves by coming top in voting for the European Parliament elections, grabbing 25%. Now, polls say that Ms Le Pen could grab nearly 40% in northern France. And her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, could match this score in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, in the country’s south.
Such a result would not guarantee either member of the Le Pen clan victory a week later, when the French return to the polls for a second-round vote on December 13th. This is because, on the evening of the first-round results, the mainstream left and right will begin furious negotiations to decide whether and how to gang up against the FN in the run-off. Nicolas Sarkozy, the opposition centre-right leader, says he has ruled out withdrawing any candidates in regions where the left could beat the FN. Manuel Valls, the Socialist prime minister, has muttered about merging party lists.
While the two parties nurse their wounds and prepare their tactical response, the FN is likely to be celebrating. If polls are right, such scores would confirm the FN’s entrenchment as the third big party in a tripartite system, and its emergence from the dark outer fringes of respectability into serious political territory. Crucially for the FN, a strong first-round score would then create the political momentum needed for victory a week later.
Anxieties and confusion about migrants, terrorists and guns flowing freely across Europe’s open borders have done Ms Le Pen’s campaigning for her, feeding into a narrative she has constructed over the course of years. When she used to denounce Schengen, Europe’s border-free travel area, or the radicalisation of home-grown Islam, she was treated by polite society as a fear-mongering hysteric. Yet the past few weeks have seen Mr Hollande, on the left, stampeding onto her ground and stealing the proposals on security and extremism that his party once denounced.
The French president has reinstated temporary border controls on the country’s frontiers, sent fighter planes to bomb Islamic State targets in Syria, and imposed a state of emergency, granting the police sweeping powers. So far, the police have raided 2,235 premises and put 330 people under house arrest. According to Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, in 15 days the police have seized a third as many guns and weapons as they do in a typical year. Three mosques considered radical have been closed, a measure never taken before under any government in France.
All of this has helped to reassure public opinion; the public has scarcely blinked an eye at the extra police powers that the state of emergency grants. It has also contributed to Mr Hollande’s rebound, as he emerges not only as a statesmanlike figure, which he also did momentarily after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, but as a tough-minded war leader. At the same time, Mr Hollande has embraced a new and unapologetic form of French patriotism, encouraging popular displays of the tricolore flag in ways that would once have made those on the left deeply uncomfortable.
Mr Hollande’s warrior-like reincarnation on the one hand, and Ms Le Pen’s populist nationalism on the other, have had a combined impact: the crowding out of space on the centre-right. Mr Sarkozy, who was elected president in 2007 in part thanks to anti-immigration rhetoric which helped to squeeze the FN, has found it difficult in recent weeks to sound a distinctive note. Many of his own arguments, such as the need to rethink Schengen, no longer set him apart. His party, the Republicans, will still do well, but Mr Sarkozy may not make the sweeping gains he had hoped for.
Despite Mr Hollande’s personal poll bounce, the Socialist Party is likely to lose a number of regions. Voters distinguish his successful incarnation of France and its values in the aftermath of the attacks from his party’s inability to bring down unemployment and revive the economy at either national or regional level. Both the right and the left are displaying signs of panic in the face of the rise of the FN. But if one views the regional elections as the run-up to France’s presidential election in 2017, it is clear that the candidate with the momentum is Ms Le Pen.
