Learning from France’s errors

THE CAREFULLY constructed veil of respectability with which Marine Le Pen has draped France’s far-right National Front briefly slipped last week. “We will accept no religious demands in school menus,” she stated. Asked if that meant National Front mayors would impose pork in school canteens, Le Pen replied: “Exactly”.

While she later backtracked — suggesting her aim was to prevent pork being banned from school menus, while at the same time conceding that no such ban currently existed — it was a rare public misstep by Le Pen. Ridding the National Front of the stench of antisemitism, which overpowered it during the leadership of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been central to the detoxification strategy Le Pen fille has pursued since succeeding him in 2011. While he infamously described the Holocaust as a mere “detail” in history, she denounced Nazism as “an abomination”.

But the veneer is a thin one: even since becoming leader, Le Pen has advocated a ban on wearing kippot in public and refused to axe the party’s PR adviser, Frederic Chatillon, a supporter of Hizbollah, backer of Bashar al Assad and publisher of Holocaust-denial literature. While claiming her party is a “friend” of Israel, Le Pen has also defended Iran’s nuclear programme.

Nonetheless, it is a strategy which thus far has paid rich dividends: local elections last month saw the National Front gain control of a record number of town halls. The party expects further gains in next month’s European parliamentary elections.

Le Pen’s success should be more than just a matter of concern to all those who fear that the aftermath of the economic crisis has brought a worrying upsurge in racism, xenophobia and antisemitism across Europe. It should also provide a warning to Ed Miliband about the high stakes which currently confront him — for the rise of Marine Le Pen is intimately connected to the sense of cynicism and betrayal which has become the hallmark of François Hollande’s presidency. Two years ago, Hollande promised France a decisive break with austerity: declaring that “the enemy is the world of finance”, he pledged to return the retirement age to 60, restore 60,000 jobs which had been lost in the public sector and reintroduce rent controls. A new 75p tax rate on the very wealthy was the jewel in this decidedly left-of-centre crown.

Today, Hollande’s approval ratings are a dire 17 per cent. He repeatedly predicted that unemployment would fall by the end of 2013; by January 2014 it had hit a record high of 3.3 million. The Constitutional Court threw out the 75p tax rate, which has now been imposed on companies’ payroll taxes instead.

Unsurprisingly, foreign investment into France has more than halved since he took office. And most of France’s “squeezed middle” has seen its taxes rise, breaking the president’s campaign promise that nine out of 10 households would not face higher taxes.

Like François Mitterand before him, Hollande has now embarked upon a dramatic mid-course correction. In opposition, the Socialist Party fought Nicolas Sarkozy’s attempts to trim public services. Today, Hollande warns that the state has become “too heavy, too slow, too costly” and plans swingeing cuts in public spending.

Taxes, too, are “too heavy”, Hollande now says, and are deterring job creation. “How can we run a country if entrepreneurs don’t hire, and how can we redistribute if there’s no wealth?’” the president recently asked. In the wake of the elections, Hollande sacked his prime minister and appointed the selfavowed Blairite, Manuel Valls.

Like Hollande, Labour has both pledged to cut the deficit if it wins power but said precious little about where the axe will fall. Miliband faces an unenviable task: he must inspire hope without raising false expectations. Getting that balance right will decide not only whether he makes it to Downing Street.

It may also determine whether Britain can avoid a French-like toxic political atmosphere in which more sinister forces than Nigel Farage’s brand of right-wing populism might thrive.

Robert Philpot is editor of Progress Magazine