Straws in the Wind (Front National)

by Adrian Davies

Patriots not only in France but throughout Europe will have rejoiced at the excellent results obtained by the Front National (FN) in the first round of voting in the French regional elections last Sunday, 6^th December.

The FN topped the poll in six of France’s thirteen regions, where it will now run off against one or more of the system parties in the second round this coming Sunday, 13^th December.

The form of poll by which French voters elect their regional assemblies is neither a “first past the post” nor a proportional method, but a curious two round system in which any party obtaining more than 10% of the votes in the first round is entitled to contest the second, which is decided on a “winner takes all” basis.

Efforts by the various left-wing parties led by the Socialist Party (PS) to create a “republican front” against the FN by doing a dirty deal with the establishment right (the so-called “Republicans” of the UMP) are not proving very successful, as the vain, unprincipled and boundlessly ambitious Nicholas Sarkozy, presently the leading figure on the fractious system orientated pseudo-right, is unwilling to play this game.  “Sarko”, wiser than the PS, fears (not without reason) that an alliance between the PS and the UMP against the FN will only increase the FN’s appeal to the increasing numbers of French people totally disillusioned with the failed political class, whether liberal or Socialist.

While undoubtedly the second round will prove a hard struggle in which every vote will count, there are reasons to hope that the FN will carry at least two of the six regions and might do better still.

What have been the themes of the FN’s campaign?  Marine Le Pen scarcely needs to talk about the security situation after the 13^th November massacres.  It is present before everyone’s eyes.  I was in Paris a few days ago and saw squads of heavily armed soldiers in full combat gear patrolling the streets.  This sight does not reassure the people, so much as giving the impression of living in a war zone under constant threat of further atrocities.

Instead, she has been speaking about the tidal wave of immigrants which the Socialist government is trying to disperse throughout the small towns and villages of France, to the horror of millions of French, who have up to now had little day to day contact with the unpleasant realities of France’s grim “banlieues”, the poor suburban areas largely populated by alienated non-Europeans who live on benefits paid for by a shrinking base of largely indigenous tax payers, themselves moving abroad in every greater numbers to get away from the economic mismanagement of the Socialist government and the threat of further horrors such as the world witnessed on 13^th November.

That is not, however the only important theme in Marine Le Pen’s political discourse.  She articulates policies of economic nationalism, the protection of traditional industries, trades, crafts and professions, and of the important agricultural sector, which in France is thankfully still dominated by small farmers rather than agribusinesses, as well as the welfare state, limited, of course to the true French.  Such policies might not be wholly easy to implement at national level.  Even I, who am a great admirer of Marine Le Pen, find it difficult to see how she could deliver all that both her working class and her more middle class supporters desire, but one of the advantages of opposition is that it is not always necessary to be entirely consistent!

The FN proposes a rational foreign policy based on the realisation that it is not possible to bomb countries that have never done us any harm into the stone age, then expect their peoples to love us, or to overthrow imperfect but secular governments in the Arab world and imagine that democracy rather than Islamic fundamentalism of the Daesh or Al Qaeda variety will come next.

Rather it opposes messianic warmongering and seeks a more intelligent relationship with Russia than endless insults and name calling against a great European nation that has put communism (never really Russian in inspiration anyway) behind it and now desires no more than to pursue its own legitimate interests, not to impose an alien ideology upon the world.

What conclusions are we to learn from the increasing success of the FN?  The first is that politics is a long, hard struggle, in which decades of work at grass roots level are needed before national success is attainable.  Success has not come easily to the FN.  Activists toiled away in their wards and constituencies for many a long year before they began to make any solid progress.

Such progress will not be attained by stunts or gimmicks, still less by withdrawing from the democratic process and opting out of reality by creating fanciful alternative structures that hold no appeal at all for 99.99% of our own people.

The second is that when even limited success is attained, the elected representatives of nationalist parties must conduct themselves in exemplary fashion.  Competence and integrity are both necessary.

One of Marine Le Pen’s proudest boasts, not for herself, but for her party and all the tens of thousands of French patriots who have laboured for forty years to make it what it is to-day, is that the FN’s vote has soared in the towns that it already runs.  The people have seen what the FN can do at local level, and like what they see.

The third is that there is much to be said for being a party of radical, uncompromising opposition to the present system.  We should not wish to be just another participant in the party game.  Our object should be to transform politics completely, not go to the boundaries of the liberal consensus, but no further, as UKIP weakly does.

When the system is visibly failing, people will turn to an alternative elite, if that elite is perceived as sincere, competent and honest (three pre-conditions that must all be fulfilled).

How we create a movement to bring about such change in British political life by lawful means and through the electoral process is quite another matter.  One of the many bad consequences of the failure of previous nationalist parties is that the pseudo-nationalist UKIP now occupies the electoral space that we should wish to occupy, making the emergence of a party such as the FN in the British Isles difficult to envisage at present, but that is a question for another day.  For the present, we should congratulate our counterparts across the Channel, and try to learn from their inspiring example as best we may.