mer, the other main figure in Les Républic-
ains’ leadership, Alain Juppé, moved ahead
of him in the polls, both among voters at
large and among party ranks. In contrast to
Sarkozy, Juppé radiated calm confidence.
He had held top ministerial jobs and was a
successful mayor of Bordeaux.
Sarkozy’s reaction was typical. He
became even more strident on what he iden-
tified as the main concerns of the French
— security, terrorism and immigration. In
speeches this autumn he proposed locking
up anybody merely suspected of Islamic rad-
icalisation and played heavily to nativism. In
short, he tried to out-Le Pen Le Pen,
Juppé has remained calm. That is in
character, but therein may lie his problem.
He fails to reflect widespread anger about
immigration and terrorism — though he
did strike a firm note by saying the Calais
‘Jungle’ should be moved across the Chan-
nel. His age, 71, ten years older than Sarkozy,
may also present difficulties. The economic
and social reforms he promises are sensi-
ble but similar to those he pursued as prime
minister in the 1990s, before suffering a
crushing electoral defeat. Most seriously, he
is the embodiment of the elite establishment
which has run France for four decades — a
self-serving political class which the country
no longer trusts.
In short, while Sarkozy’s only tactic has
been to outbid the far right, his main rival
hardly cuts a convincing figure for the trou-
bled nation of today. The same goes for the
other challengers in Les Républicains.
Which leaves a huge vacuum for Le Pen.
She is credited with 28–30 per cent support
for the first round of the presidential poll —
ten points more than she won last time, and
ahead of any mainstream candidate. That
would qualify her for the two-person runoff,
which nobody thinks she would win. But, at
48, she can take her time; she said four years
ago that the 2022 election was her real goal.
She would have shown that almost a third of
voters were ready to cast their initial ballots
her way and cemented the Front’s claim to
be France’s biggest political movement.
That would be evidence of her success in
detoxifying the Front of its wayward bully-
boy image under her father, Jean-Marie,
who has been expelled from its ranks for
repeating his dismissal of the Holocaust as
‘a detail’ of history. Marine, twice divorced
and now the partner of the Front’s vice-
president, knows how to play to the gallery;
she paraded at the last party conference with
a tame eagle on her arm (Donald Trump, eat
your heart out). But she also comes over as
somebody who understands the difficul-
ties of ordinary life, in contrast to the elite
university graduates who waft between the
At 48, Marine can take
her time – she has said that the
2022 el ect ion is h er real goalcivil service and the mainstream parties. She
is an adroit tactician and a highly polished
performer. Under her, the Front has been
recruiting young militants and reaching out
into the civil service and the professions to
form a far more solid base than it had in her
father’s day. She can even sound a moderate
note. Responding to Sarkozy’s proposal to
lock up suspected radicals without trial, for
instance, she insisted on the importance of
the rule of law, and she largely stayed out of
the culture-wars battle that was fought over
Hollande’s gay marriage legislation.H
er core appeal, however, is to claim to be
able to remedy the nation’s woes with
Jean-Marie’s old mixture of national revival,
immigration and law and order. She can also
now ask why voters would choose ‘Le Pen
lite’ by backing Sarkozy when they could
have the real thing.
By the standards of progressive, enlight-
ened France and its elite, Le Pen’s medicine
is retrograde, including as it does second-
class status for immigrants in welfare, tough-er sentencing, protectionism and more state
economic intervention. She celebrates the
fact that ‘the nation state is back’ and, nat-
urally, favours a move towards ‘Frexit’. But
whatever the elite thinks, like the leaders of
anti-EU movements elsewhere, she strikes a
resonant chord in places they do not.
The Front now has more support from
industrial workers than any other party and
took 6.8 million votes, nearly 30 per cent, in
the first round of regional elections last year.
That was enough to frighten the mainstream
parties into forming anti-Front coalitions,
and the party duly lost out in the second
round. Many commentators saw that failure
as evidence that the Front’s progress could
be halted by the guardians of the republic.
On the contrary, the need for those coali-
tions demonstrated that the Front is now
a central element in French politics in the
face of a mainstream right riven by personal
wars, policy weaknesses and a growing sep-
aration from issues that concern the bulk
of the French. Tellingly, during the region-
al polls, middle-class people were ready to
tell television reporters they had voted for
the Front in a way that they would not have
done in Jean-Marie’s day.
This is part of a much wider pattern
stretching across Europe and beyond. That
it should have been allowed to develop in
a country which takes its enlightenment
values so seriously and sees itself as a bea-
con for humanity is a condemnation of
the leaders France has been saddled with
for decades.Jonathan Fenby’s History of Modern France
from the Revolution to the War on Terror
‘The meaning of life I can do. Brexit, I can’t.’ is now in an updated paperback edition.Icehouse
(Ralph Allen 1693–1764)
In the open-air café our glasses are fizzing with lemonade,
our heads with history. Just imagine, you say, marking
your guide-book, and we squint into glare till lake-dazzle
whitens to ice and Postmaster Allen’s first gardeners
and woodsmen, their calls faint and cloudy, emerge
in the snowscape, laden with grapple-hooks, axes,
hauling sledges and carts. Below the Palladian bridge
they saw and heave their cold harvest inshore, up to
its dark winter sepulchre. Slab upon glistening slab
lowered and packed into sackcloth, layers of straw.
Behold wealth. Clear and chill as his hilltop statement
in stone: built to see all of Bath, for all Bath to see.
Downing our drinks we climb back toward it, out into
sun-melt, tongue and lips numb from slivers of ice.— André Mangeot