France went to the polls yesterday to vote for mayors and councillors in over 36,000 municipalities. Results have barely made headlines in Britain. But all agree that the news is catastrophic for President Francois Hollande’s ruling Socialist Party, in what most have interpreted as a referendum on the state of national government.
The Socialists were braced for humiliation. Last’s week’s first-round elections saw them poll 43 per cent of the popular vote versus the 48 per cent garnered by the conservative UMP opposition. Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National (FN) won a respectable 7 per cent of the country and managed to capture outright the northern town of Hénin-Beaumont. That was a remarkable achievement for a party once associated with thuggery and anti-Semitism, but which is now positioned as a eurosceptic insurgency.
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