Looking beyond Le Pen

Le Pen was defeated on Sunday's French presidential poll, but his initial success in the first round left an ugly stain on the French political establishment, writes Gavin Bowd
So the worst, it seems, has been avoided. With 82 per cent of the vote, the torch-bearer of the Gaullist tradition, Jacques Chirac, trounced the leader of the far right, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Turn-out increased by 10 per cent and left-wing voters put aside their doubts about the "Super-Liar" and mobilised to send him back to the Elysee palace for another five years of immunity from prosecution. The Republican-Democratic pact became reality.
The anti-racist French could sleep easily with the thought that the global embarrassment of Le Pen in the second round was now behind them. But there are unpleasant realities which, as insidiously as Sunday's rain, must seep into the consciousness of France's mainstream politicians.
A score of 18 per cent was a disappointment for Le Pen and his staff: he did not even achieve the aggregate of the two far right candidates in the first round. Serious commentators had suggested that a third of the vote could go to the Front National. Instead Chirac saw off his bitter rival with a record margin. However, it must be pointed out that Le Pen's personal share of the vote increased and, on a higher turnout, the FN won a record number of votes: nearly six million, the highest score ever achieved by the Fascist tradition in France. In parts of the south, Le Pen was not far from beating the out-going president.
There is no doubt that Le Pen's success reveals a deep social and political crisis in one of the world's most prosperous and powerful nations. Immigration, crime, the corruption of the Parisian elites, inequalities in wealth and education, economic stagnation, and moribund agriculture, all contribute towards the rise of the Far Right, whose eclectic and incoherent programme appeals to a hybrid electorate: tax-cuts for the wealthy, "national preference" in employment and social security for the poor white men who turn to Le Pen in droves, with a return of the death penalty and withdrawal from the European Union pleasing all concerned.
The Frontist block is a headache for the parliamentary Right. If it holds firm for the legislative elections, Chirac could be denied a majority in the National Assembly, and the FN, for so long the losers in the first-past- the-post system, could make a historic breakthrough.
As for the Left, it entered the elections divided and traumatised. The decision of the ruling parties to each present a presidential candidate now seems to have been a fatal error. Truly fatal for the French Communist Party, founded in 1920, now facing oblivion after a humiliating score of 3 per cent, well behind its Trotskyist arch-rivals. Indeed, the rise of the Far Left is perhaps the biggest event of the presidential election: with 14 per cent of votes cast going to communist candidates, in comparison with 16 per cent for Lionel Jospin, we may see a shift in the balance of power on the Left and the creation of a new party to the left of the socialists.
On the 6 May, Jospin made his definitive exit from political life. Chirac could bathe in the adulation and rain on the Place de la République. But with a third of the French electorate supporting parties against "the system," it may not be long when the political living envy the political dead.
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