Marine le pen

On Thursday evening, I queued outside for almost two hours to see Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Front National party, speak at the Oxford Union. Thanks to protestors, who scaled the debating society's walls and allegedly chased Union officials through the building, I then waited an hour more. About 200 anti-fascist demonstrators gathered outside the Union buildings, holding placards saying ‘Marine Le Pen… Never Again!’ and chanting 'This is free speech, that is a platform'. Queuing quietly, it felt somewhat ironic to be called 'Nazi Fascist Scum!' by angry people in balaclavas.

Today’s huge Podemos rally in Madrid is a reminder that Syriza’s victory in Greece has emboldened the anti-austerity left across the Eurozone. What worries Angela Merkel and other northern European leaders is, as I say in the magazine this week, that any concessions to the new government in Athens, will lead to Podemos—a party which was founded less than 12 months ago—wining the Spanish elections later this year. But the country that most worries European policymakers isn’t Greece or Spain but France. Its economy is showing no signs of recovering and its politics are threatening to become very ugly indeed. A new poll published this week shows the Front National’s Marine Le Pen topping the first round of the French presidential election.

A week before the attack on Charlie Hebdo, France’s leading gay magazine, Têtu, announced the winner of its annual beauty contest. His name was Matthieu Chartraire, and he was 22, doe-eyed and six-packed, with perfectly groomed hair, stubble and eyebrows. A pin-up in every way — until he started talking. To the anger of many of the magazine’s readers, the Adonis of 2015 turns out to be an outspoken supporter of the Front National. Têtu’s editor-in-chief, Yannick Barbe, refused to play censor. ‘It’s within his rights to vote for the FN even if we don’t share his beliefs,’ he said. ‘This is a beauty pageant, and our readers’ vote was only based on a single criterion!

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_5_June_2014_v4.mp3" title="Freddy Gray discusses the end of the French republic" startat=1844] Listen [/audioplayer]Last week President François Hollande, following his party’s humiliation in the European parliamentary elections (his Socialists won roughly half as many seats as the National Front), decided to cheer himself up. He left Paris and travelled to Clairefontaine to mingle with France’s World Cup football squad. ‘If you do win the World Cup final on 13 July,’ he told the millionaire players (most of whom avoid Hollande’s taxes by being paid outside France), ‘you will deserve a triumphant welcome.

Nige, I write to warn you about a certain Italian with a big disturbing beard called Mister Beppe Grillo — your new friend who you met in Brussels on Wednesday. We are both, you and me, men of Kent. You Sevenoaks, me Westerham. We have much in common. You Dulwich College, me King’s Canterbury. We are both rebels because we both — despite being the wrong side of 50 - drink and smoke way too much — regardless. But, these days, I live in Italy. And you do not. So take it from me babe: leave well alone the Italian fried-air salesman Grillo who is an 'ex' communist and 'ex' comedian. You met him in Brussels to see if your Ukip can ally with his M5S movement in the European Parliament. Forget about it, old trout. Here’s why.

Inevitably the lowest attacks have been saved until the week of the election. For months now the neat drip-feeding of anti-UKIP stories from Conservative Campaign Headquarters direct to the UK press has done everything possible to depict UKIP as a racist, xenophobic, bigoted party. This has been significantly ratcheted up ahead of Thursday’s vote. Today’s pages include the Times repeating a story from last year in the hope of successful guilt-by-association. The story is that Geert Wilders (the ‘Dutch Xenophobe’ as the Times headlines him) would like Nigel Farage to join him and Marine Le Pen in an anti-EU Brussels voting bloc.

There is today only one united French political party, and it is the National Front. The FN has been profiting from a split French right, a hopeless French left and from the general disenchantment with the political class. It is tempting then to compare, as Agnes Poirier did in the Times, the FN’s recent success with that of Ukip in Britain. Tempting, but wrong. The National Front is 30 years older than Ukip, and a very different beast. It supports protectionist policies, while Ukip promotes a more libertarian and democratic approach. The FN’s ‘progressive tax’ – a rising income tax – clearly contrasts with the flat tax advocated by Ukip.

Nicolas Sarkozy has served up his second austerity budget in as many months, in a bid to retain France's AAA credit rating. The president wants to cling on to those three precious letters at all costs. There are elections in six months' time and he isn’t doing well in the polls. Austerité Part Deux consists of tax increases and spending cuts totalling €7 billion, the government announced today. There will be increases in VAT and levies on large corporations, as well as curbs on increases in welfare spending. This savings programme follows the €11 billion one announced in August. Sarko's bid to get re-elected in 2012 is in disarray.