The first round of the French regional elections on Sunday saw far-right Front National (FN) of Marine Le Pen win its best ever result, 28 per cent, to lead in six of 13 regions with six million votes, and to establish itself as the country's leading political force. It has dramatically set the scene for the already much-anticipated presidential elections in April 2017.
Unable to capitalise on widespread praise for his unifying response to the Paris attacks, President François Hollande saw his Socialist Party trailing poorly in third place on 23 per cent. Humiliatingly, its leadership yesterday was forced to pull its third-place candidates out of the second round in three regions to allow hated Nicolas Sarkozy's Les Republicains a chance to go head to head with the FN – one of the Socialists is refusing to withdraw.
Worse still, the withdrawal scenario now also looms large for the presidential election, unless the party’s fortunes are dramatically transformed. It is a prospect that fills many Socialist supporters with despair – bad and all as Le Pen is, they see Sarkozy as scarcely any better.
But the result was also a major setback for the Republicains and Sarkozy who saw their clear lead in March over the FN reversed, his strategy for sidelining the latter by apeing many of its policies seriously discredited. Sarkozy was unrepentant, however, refusing either to consider an informal anti-FN alliance with Socialists for the second round, or the withdrawal of any of his third-place candidates. His attitude will hardly endear him to Socialists who might otherwise have been expected to vote for his party in the second round.
Le Pen – the FN on 28 per cent, while she took over 40 per cent herself in Pas de Calais – is triumphant, insisting that they are the only force capable of "reconquering the suburbs" from immigrants. Despite its inflammatory rhetoric and politics of fear, the FN has stepped decisively in from the sidelines, from party of protest to third force, a quasi-legitimate alternative to establishment politics. France is opening a frightening new chapter in its political history.