‘Betrayed’ by the Left, France’s poor mull Le Pen

The white statue of Notre Dame de Hayange gazes across the Valley of Angels towards the carcasses of two huge, dormant blast furnaces.

The failed fight to prevent their 2013 closure in the heart of eastern France’s rust belt has come to symbolise rampant de-industralisation in a country that has lost 1.5 million jobs in industry in the past 25 years.

Once staunchly Left-wing, Hayange is now one of 11 towns in France run by the Front National, whose candidate Marine Le Pen is expected to sail into the presidential election’s final round. With its promise of protectionism, the FN clinched more than 50 per cent of the vote in 2015 regional elections here prompting the Communist mayor of one neighbouring town to remark: “Even a goat with an FN label would get elected right now.”

A bustling Thursday market brings welcome – if fleeting – dynamism to a town where unemployment runs at 14 per cent. Half of Hayange’s shops are shuttered while a smattering of boulangeries, hairdressers and a fishmonger soldier on in the centre.

The 39-year-old FN mayor, Fabien Engelmann, in office since 2014, has been at pains to prove his party can do governing as well as demagoguery, making modest cuts to the town’s debt and taxes, and launching a popular annual “fête du cochon” (pig festival).

“Personally, I have nothing bad to say about him. For now all is working well,” said Fabrice Leglin, 29, a bus conductor from Hayange, shopping with his wife and small child. Like many in France, Mr Leglin is furious with mainstream politics and unsure how to vote. “We need to have someone who resembles us in power and then things would get done,” he said.

Vincent Marcel, 61, said: “It’s certainly no worse than under the Socialists. There are less homeless loitering in the town centre, we feel a little safer.” Mr Marcel used to work for Arcelor-Mittal, whose decision to shut the Hayange furnaces sparked a standoff with Socialist president François Hollande, who pledged to save the plant. His industry minister briefly threatened to nationalise the furnaces and throw Arcelor out, but in the end they were closed.

“Hollande betrayed us,” said Lionel Burriello of the CGT union at the steel plant in neighbouring Florange. A photo of Che Guevara hung behind him. “He’s an unprecedented turncoat and today he’s paying for it.”

Sitting in his office, Hayange’s mayor was surrounded by photos of his “heroine” Brigitte Bardot. A curious political specimen, Mr Engelmann spent seven years as a far-Left activist for the Worker’s Struggle party. “I have a very coherent career path,” insisted the mayor. “Today, only Marine Le Pen defends the working class. Only she proposes a programme of common sense, protectionism, the return of a strong state that can regulate offshoring, and getting rid of the EU.”

At the market, opinions were mixed on the FN’s chances. “I’m not worried about Frexit. You did it in Britain. Are you scared?,” said Mr Marcel. “But I won’t vote Le Pen. I am the grandchild of Italian immigrants. I’m scared of extremes for me and my children.”

But others, like Alexandre Wierth, 27, a musicology student, were mulling taking the plunge if only to “blow up the system”. “People talk about how deplorable (the election of Donald Trump) was in America, but in France I don’t think we’ll do any better,” he said. “Maybe we need the ideas of Marine Le Pen – a Frexit to get us out of there and to take back control.”

With 40 per cent of the electorate still undecided, Ms Le Pen’s chances hinge on how this dilemma plays out.