Marine le pen

Francois Fillon limps on despite ‘fake job’ probe

Francois Fillon had previously said he would drop out of the French Presidential race if corruption allegations against him resulted in him being placed under formal investigation. But the candidate of the Republican party has just held a press conference to declare that yes, he is being placed under formal investigation over payments to his family but no, he is not dropping out of the race. He has accused the judiciary and the press of attempting a ‘political assassination’. Fillon’s decision to stay in the race increases the likelihood of a Macron/ Le Pen run off round. The latest polls show Le Pen in the lead in the first with

L’anti-Trump

If you believe the hype, Emmanuel Macron is l’anti-Trump. He is what the inter-national centre-left, reeling from the shocks of Brexit and the US election and fearful of a victory for Marine Le Pen in France, is crying out for: a politician who can win again. He is only 39 years old, handsome and radical sounding. He’s not a career politico; he used to work as a banker for the Rothschilds (every-body loves them). He wears sharp suits and he’s written a book called Révolution. Better still, he has a buzzing movement behind him: his ‘En Marche!’ (Let’s go!) campaign has excited trendy progressives. He is not bogged down with

James Forsyth

The new third Way

Forget left and right — the new divide in politics is between nationalists and globalists. Donald Trump’s team believe that he won because he was the America First candidate, defying the old rules of politics. His nationalist rhetoric on everything from trade to global security enabled him to flip traditionally Democratic, blue-collar states and so to defeat that personification of the post-war global order, Hillary Clinton. The presidential election in France is being fought on these lines, too. Marine Le Pen is the nationalist candidate, a hybrid of the hard right and the far left. She talks of quitting the European single currency and of bringing immigration down to 10,000

Emmanuel Macron’s idyllic vision of France is a myth

As Emmanuel Macron stood on the steps of Downing Street on Tuesday urging Britain’s ‘banks, talents, researchers, academics’ to move across the Channel after Brexit, security services in France were dismantling yet another Islamic terror cell preparing to launch a terrorist attack. That makes three this month, a clear indication that the Islamists are itching to carry out a major attack in the run-up to April’s presidential election. Tuesday’s police raid targeted addresses in Clermont, Marseille and the Paris area. ‘The suspects had a plot that was sufficiently advanced for the police to decide to arrest them’, said a police spokesman. According to the French media, police had been monitoring the suspects’ text

Low life | 16 February 2017

A deep frost in the winter of 1821–22 killed the orange trees in Nice. The Anglican minister to the English colony, the Reverend Lewis Way, appealed to his congregation for relief funds to provide work for redundant orange-pickers. The money raised was spent on the construction of six miles of coast road, the redundant orange-pickers were employed as navvies, and the completed road became known as the Promenade des Anglais. On 14 July 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian bisexual gym bunny, drove a 19-tonne truck into a crowd assembled on the Promenade des Anglais to watch the Bastille Day fireworks, killing 86 and injuring 450. On 13 February 2017,

Marine Le Pen’s plan to leave the euro is deranged

Unemployment is crucifyingly high. Factories have lost competitiveness. The share of euro-zone exports is in relentless decline. Industrial production is still lower than it was in 2008. The euro might have been a French idea – but France has turned into one of its main victims. The National Front Leader Marine Le Pen is certainly right to insist that France can’t recover while it is inside the single currency. There is a problem however. Her plan for getting out is completely deranged. The first round of voting in the Presidential election is only three months away, and the National Front leader seems almost certain to make the second round. So in the

Nick Hilton

The Spectator podcast: The great French collapse

On this week’s episode, we consider Marine Le Pen’s path to power in France, whether we allow posh people to bluff their way to success, and why men aren’t ‘lunging’ at women in Ubers. The first round of the French presidential election will be held at the end of April, and, after a turbulent couple of months that has seen establishment candidates dropping like, well, establishment candidates, the polls favour a run-off between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. Macron, a 39-year-old independent candidate seen as another ‘heir to Blair’, is all that stands between the Front National and government, a terrifying prospect for liberal France. In this week’s magazine, Professor Robert

A choice of revolutions

Is France on the brink of a political revolution? Already, four established candidates for the presidency — two former presidents and two former prime ministers — have backed out or been rejected by the voters, and another, François Fillon, is on the ropes. The campaign is being taken over by outsiders, principally the Front National’s Marine Le Pen and a youthful former banker, Emmanuel Macron, while the Socialists have chosen an eccentric radical, Benoît Hamon. Should we welcome a shake-up in the cradle of European revolutions? What kind of shake-up might it be — socialist (the least likely), liberal with Macron or nationalist with Le Pen? Or can the outsiders

Is Emmanuel Macron the doomed heir to Blair?

I have a friend who lost three members of his family when an Islamic extremist drove a truck down the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on Bastille Day. When we saw each other at Christmas he said he had yet to decide whether to cast his vote for François Fillon or Marine Le Pen in the election, the two presidential candidates he considered best placed to restore law and order to France. When I asked what he thought of Emmanuel Macron he laughed. It was a cold contemptuous laugh. In the weeks since, I’ve conducted my ‘Macron Test’ on a number of occasions, throwing his name into the conversation with

François Fillon’s presidential campaign may be about to unravel

François Fillon’s bid to become president of France has suffered another serious blow with more allegations of financial impropriety in today’s Le Canard Enchaîné. Last week the investigative weekly, France’s equivalent of Private Eye, claimed that Fillon’s Welsh wife, Penelope, had been paid €500,000 over eight years for fictitious employment. In today’s paper it is alleged she actually received €900,000 with further accusations that a decade ago Fillon hired two of his five children as parliamentary assistants while he was a senator, the pair of them earning 84,000 euros. The former Prime Minister romped to victory in November’s election to select a centre-right candidate to contest April’s election, and much

What is Marine Le Pen doing at Trump Tower?

Marine Le Pen popping up at Trump Tower has provoked a predictable storm of fury. Of course we don’t know if the Front National leader is actually there to meet Donald Trump or not. It does, though, seem like a long way to travel to do without a ride in Trump’s gilded elevator and a snapped selfie with the president-elect. Perhaps then the draw of the Trump Tower cafe proved too alluring to resist during Le Pen’s unscheduled visit to New York. But while details about exactly what she is up to in Trump Tower are thin on the ground, the fact she is there at all is certainly interesting.

Europe’s year of insurgency

After the tumult of 2016, Europe could do with a year of calm. It won’t get one. Elections are to be held in four of the six founder members of the European project, and populist Eurosceptic forces are on the march in each one. There will be at least one regime change: François Hollande has accepted that he is too unpopular to run again as French president, and it will be a surprise if he is the only European leader to go. Others might cling on but find their grip on power weakened by populist success. The spectre of the financial crash still haunts European politics. Money was printed and

Martin Vander Weyer

Will disgruntlement prevail again in 2017? Who knows, but at least 2016 was quite fun

Most of my predictions for 2016 were wrong; so let’s not revisit them. But I was right, in January, to identify as a theme of the coming year an evident gulf between ‘the reinvigorated and the demoralised’. In small business sectors and provincial towns, as well as in the attitudes of millions of citizen voters here and abroad, the divergence between optimism and disgruntlement grew as the year went on. And when it came to elections and referendums, it was the downbeat that prevailed. So here we are, fearful of the craziness of Trump, the disintegration of Italy, the triumph of Marine Le Pen and the non-resolution of the Brexit

Islamofascism and appeasement are the biggest dangers facing the West

The appeasers, apologists and ‘useful idiots’ have been out in force over the festive season, busily lighting candles, declaring ‘Ich Bin Ein Berliner’ and proclaiming that the murderous attack on the Christmas market had nothing to do either with Islam or mass immigration. Thinking of them prompted me to pluck from my shelf one of my favourite books, a slim tome entitled ‘Ourselves and Germany’, written in the winter of 1937 by the Marquess of Londonderry. Otherwise known as Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, or ‘Charley’ to his pals, the Marquess could neither write well nor read men well, but his book is nonetheless riveting. It’s a timeless reminder of where an educated

Christine Lagarde’s conviction could play into the hands of the National Front

When Christine Lagarde stood before the Court of Justice of the Republic last week to defend herself against charges of criminal negligence in her handling of a long-running fraud case in France, the head of the IMF concluded: ‘I have acted in conscience, in confidence and guided by the general interest.’ But today, the court decided otherwise and announced a guilty verdict. The 60-year-old need not worry about going to prison or even paying a fine – and she won’t even receive a criminal record. Yet nonetheless the verdict is a serious blow for Lagarde, and the IMF. After all, Lagarde was supposed to be the much-needed steady pair of hands

Marine Le Pen promises to drive the Machos from the Mosques

The National Front were out in force at my local Parisian market on Saturday. A coterie of volunteers handing out leaflets with suitably festive bonhomie. I took one from a smiling middle-aged woman. It was titled ‘Au Nom Du Peuple’ and there was a photograph of the party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, looking pensive. She’s dropped the surname for her election campaign. It’s deemed too toxic, what with her reptilian father’s reputation for playing down the holocaust and playing up the sins of homosexuality. There’s a message from Marine at the top of the page, an extract from a speech she gave in September this year. ‘Nobody should ignore that

I’m a part of the elite. So why am I cheering for the populist right?

‘Are you Charles Moore of The Spectator?’ I answered to that description. ‘Well,’ said my questioner, ‘I am worried that you’re becoming very right-wing.’ We were sitting by the fire in a charming, smoky hut with no electric light and lots to eat and drink. It was a shooting lunch, the sort of occasion where one is seldom held to account for anything. I could have tried to laugh the question off, but my interrogator exhibited high intelligence and class confidence, so I sensed she wouldn’t let me get away with that. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to answer her. I am not offended by being called right-wing, because I don’t agree

Did the ‘rise of populism’ really cost David Cameron his job?

When The Spectator was founded 188 years ago, it became part of what would now be described as a populist insurgency. An out-of-touch Westminster elite, we said, was speaking a different language to the rest of London, let alone the rest of the country. Too many ‘of the bons mots vented in the House of Commons appear stale and flat by the time they have travelled as far as Wellington Street’. This would be remedied, we argued, by extending the franchise and granting the vote to the emerging middle class. Our Tory critics said any step towards democracy — a word which then caused a shudder — would start a

Algerian winter

It is more than possible that before any Brexit deal is discussed, let alone concluded, the EU will have effectively collapsed. And the key factor could be the demise of Algeria’s leader of 17 years. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is 79 and has needed a wheelchair since having a stroke in 2013. ‘His mind is even more infirm than his body,’ one observer tells me. Bouteflika returned home recently after a week’s stay at a private clinic in France. His prognosis isn’t good. Officially, Bouteflika underwent standard ‘periodic medical tests’ in Grenoble. But no one believes this. Among people who know Algeria well, there is little doubt that he is severely

François Fillon wants to wage war against the French state

François Fillon crushed Alain Juppé on Sunday night in the second round of voting for the presidential nomination for France’s main conservative party. Having knocked Nicolas Sarkozy out of the race last weekend, the 62-year-old Fillon won 66.5 percent of the vote in yesterday’s run-off against the more moderate Juppé. It’s a devastating blow for Juppé who, until a fortnight ago, was the clear favourite to represent the Républicains party in the spring election. There may have been a touch of complacency in Juppé’s campaigning, such was the feedback from the polls, which suggested he had an unassailable lead throughout the early autumn. What did for him ultimately, though, was