"Après moi, le déluge!" - After me, the deluge. So said French king Louis XV, and was he ever right. His successor faced the French Revolution and lost his head.
Much the same can be said of France's outgoing president, Nicholas Sarkozy. The victory of his Socialist rival François Hollande in last week's presidential election not only eclipsed the political career of the widely unloved Sarkozy, it left his clumsily-named political party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), facing its own deluge.
As Europe's conservatives watch in dismay and even horror, the second big shoe is about to drop in French politics. Far-rightist Marine Le Pen appears set to emerge triumphant from the wreckage of France's defeated center-right.
France holds two-round elections for its lower house, the National Assembly, on June 10 and 17. Polls show Hollande's Socialists and their left-wing allies winning some 44% of the seats; the center-right UMP, 36.5%. The Left already controls the upper house, the Senate.
Control of both houses would allow Hollande's Socialists to implement their vow to impose punitive taxes on the wealthy, hire 60,000 teachers (all Socialist stalwarts, of course), reject the EU austerity pact, boost spending and return the minimum retirement age to 60 from 62.
Meanwhile, the UMP faces questions of life and death. The party was cobbled together from four center-right parties made up of Gaullists, Liberal Gaullists, Liberal Radicals and Christian Conservatives.
Sarkozy, made giddy by the pomp and power of the royal presidency created for Charles de Gaulle, long neglected party affairs, choosing to run France like Louis XV. As a result, the party became a squabbling collection of egos without any core philosophy or direction.
The June election could inflict the coup de grâce on the floundering UMP. Not only could it be swamped by the Socialists, it must face a Faustian existential choice.
France's electoral laws mirror the complex nature of its people. Nothing is simple or straightforward. Assembly elections will be a three-way race between Socialists, UMP and Le Pen's far-right National Front.
With the Socialists holding a strong lead, UMP and National Front risk splitting the center-right vote. So electoral logic demands that they collaborate in many voting districts and agree to support a common candidate.
But the National Front -- xenophobic, racist, violently anti-Muslim and anti-Europe -- is poison to moderate French and many members of the UMP. To no surprise, UMP may split, or disintegrate, over the issue of joining forces with the National Front, seen by many French as a reborn fascist movement. In fact, it's not really fascist, but an avatar of the old 1940 far-right, ultra-conservative, ultra-Catholic movement.
National Front leader Marine Le Pen is clearly calculating that June elections will see the UMP crushed. This, in turn, may lead to massive defections of former UMP deputies to the National Front. Meaning that the National Front could become France's official opposition to the ruling Socialists.
Talk about déjà vu. Such a sweeping change would return France to its pre-war political landscape, when hard Left and hard Right were locked in bitter confrontation. Marine Le Pen could well emerge as the angry voice of many Europeans -- a prospect that causes shudders across conservative-ruled Europe.
She could also prove the nemesis of the European Union. Le Pen has vowed to oppose austerity pacts, quit the Euro, restore the franc and follow economic mercantilism. Her anti-EU, anti-free trade policies are attracting many people across Europe and even in Russia.
Fortunately, François Hollande could prove a counter-balance to the ascendant Right. He is a moderate, cautious, centrist politician given to pragmatism rather than ideology. His popularity and image of geniality and caring about people will help him withstand the forces of both Left and Right trying to pull him in different directions.
Even so, Marine Le Pen and her aggressive rightists are likely to become an ever-increasing threat to the French Republic as economic conditions worsen. It seems only a matter of time before ultra-conservatism rears its head again in Spain, Italy and Portugal. Greece is already on the way. Failure to implement austerity plans will bring economic convulsions and with them the bullies.
Follow Eric Margolis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@ericmargolis
In France, many still are nostalgic of the colonial past of the country, those who were enriching themselves in the colonies are particularly disapproving of the France’s political stance, they still resent France’s political establishment for the Independence of Algeria.
Le Front National represents the aspiration of Mr. Jean-Marie LePen and few nostalgic elites who have lost their privileges - the movement is the legacy of the Algerian war in the early 1960s, where Mr. Jean-Marie LePen the father of the party’s current leader Marine LePen used to live and ruled the colony with impunity - enriching himself by exploiting the Algerian national resources. Le Front National has no ideological basis other than Mr. Jean-Marie LePen’s resentment and frustration with France’s political class; it is all about getting even with the Gaullists, who have abandoned him in Algeria by granting independence to the Algerian people, where he lost his privileges and had to return to France as a common citizen. Mr. LePen has not forgotten it and certainly not forgave them.
At its core, Le Front National is about resentment not political ideology, it is a movement of protest against the French democracy. it is certainly not about the common people but about few nostalgic elites who have lost their privileges in the post colonial era of the country. Ali R. Besharati
What I would be intrigued to know is this:
We are observing quite a couple of these developments in different forms and shades across Europe (and even the US as far as I am aware). "These developments" doesn't necessarily mean a shift to the right but young voters who suddenly support parties or candidates that are - above all - anti- establishment. In France it's LePen, in Germany, last year it was Greens, this year it's Pirates Party, in the US Ron Paul, in Finland True Fins, in Greece Syriza, etc. . Means, in situations where electoral outcomes are more or less predictable/ along the proven establishment lines (in France it was clear that either Hollande or Sarkozy would win) parties who a) have a chance to be at least represented and b) are some sort of thorn in the side of establishment are attractive.
Now, these people don't stand squarely behind those parties' programs or ideas. Particularly in Europe, where driven by demographics the political representation is mostly done (and decided at the ballot box) by the consolidated/ saturated baby boomer generation this is a call of younger people to say "Hey, we are here, too! We are not satisfied that much of the burden is mostly placed on our (sandwich) generation (be it debt, job perspectives, etc.)."