According to official forecasts, the 43-year-old daughter of the founder of the National Front (NF) secured between 18.2 and 20 per cent of the vote, performing even better than Jean Marie Le Pen’s shock result in 2002, when he won 17 per cent. At her press conference on Sunday night she burst into a rendition of La Marseillaise in front of delirious supporters waving the national flag.
“Whatever happens over the next two weeks, the battle for France has only just begun,” she said.
“We have exploded the monopoly of the two [main] parties of banks, finance, of multinationals, of resignation and abandonment, and carried higher than ever before the hopes of national ideas.
“Faced with an incumbent president at the head of a considerably weakened party, we are the only opposition to the ultra-liberal, lax and libertarian Left.”
Although it failed to take her into the second round, Miss Le Pen’s success will boost her influence on the French political scene, and is likely to hand her party seats in parliament later in the year. It could affect relations with minorities in France and in other European countries after a campaign based on rhetoric against immigrants, Islam and the European Union. » | Henry Samuel, Paris | Sunday, April 22, 2012
My comment:
France needs Marine Le Pen. France, like the UK, is tiring of the two main parties. They do nothing for France, French culture. And culture France has in abundance.
The UK had culture in abundance once too; but these days nobody stands up for it – at least not in the two main parties. If one doesn't stand up for one's culture, the culture will soon disappear – it will be swamped.
How Britain needs its own Le Pen! How Britain needs to shock the establishment into action! Would that Le Pen were a force in Britain. I, for one, despair of the same old claptrap we get in the UK. We were once a proud nation; and now? We are just a shadow of our former selves. We apologise for this, shutting the people up here and there, and refusing to stand proud.
The Conservatives, the Socialists, the Liberals – they're ALL the same: Limp-wristed, craven, spineless, and weak to a man. Oh for our own Marine Le Pen! If not for office, then certainly to shake things up. – © Mark
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