Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Front (FN – Front National) pulled off a historic electoral performance in last night’s regional elections in France. These regional elections will select the members of the regional assemblies of metropolitan France, Corsica, Guyana and Martinique as well as 18 presidencies (presidencies where a majority is not achieved in the first round will face a run-off election on the 13 December).
As was widely predicted, the far right has gained most of the benefit from the terror attacks in Paris on 16 November. Mrs. Le Pen has claimed justification of her hardline stance against Muslims, immigrants, the EU’s open-border policy, lack of cooperation with the Russians and the weakness of the Socialists in general. In the provinces where Marine Le Pen and her niece, Marion, stood for election, Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie and Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur respectively, they did far better than the average: both charismatic ladies took 42% of the vote.
