Marine Le Pen 'chosen to lead France's National Front'

France's far right National Front has chosen Marine Le Pen as its new leader, replacing her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, party officials say.

The results will be officially announced on Sunday, but party sources said she had secured about two-thirds of members' votes. Mr Le Pen is stepping down after leading the ultra-nationalist party, which he founded, for almost 40 years. In 2002 he came a shock second in the first round of presidential elections. Mr Le Pen lost the second round to incumbent Jacques Chirac.

A count of votes cast ahead of the annual FN congress in the central city of Tours showed Ms Le Pen, 42, who had the backing of her father, had easily beaten her rival, Bruno Gollnisch.

The FN, with its anti-immigration agenda has been shunned by France's main parties. But Ms Le Pen has said she wants to break with its xenophobic, anti-Islam image and is confident the FN can become part of mainstream politics. A recent poll suggested the party could come third in the presidential elections to be held in 2012.

BBC

Immigration does not cause unemployment

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Roddy Newman. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Fringe racist parties sometimes claim that immigration causes unemployment, and although their claim is untrue, as I will explain, many people who at the moment would not dream of voting for such parties, believe that myth, and may thus vote for them in the future.

For example, this June 2010 Pew Research poll revealed that 50% of Americans agree with the statement: "immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care".

So, if the West ever has to go through the mass unemployment of the 1930's again, fringe racist parties could grow dramatically if the immigration causes unemployment myth is not debunked, as, for example in the US in the 1930's, many Mexicans, some of them US citizens, were rounded up and deported, because of claims that they were taking scarce jobs which white Americans could do.

Of course, if immigration did cause unemployment, countries like the US and Australia, whose populations almost all emigrated to those places in recent centuries, would have over 99% unemployment. The fact that they do not, and the fact that the large numbers of immigrants from all over the world who the US has been taking in every year since 1965, when people from all over the world were for the first time given the opportunity to move the US, do not continually increase the American unemployment rate, prove that racist parties are wrong when they say that immigration causes unemployment. In reality, immigrants spend all, or most of the money they earn in the countries which they move to, which creates jobs for the people who have to grow, or make, or provide, or sell the goods and services which immigrants buy or use.

So immigration simply increases the size of national economies, and people like Texas Republican politician Lamar Smith, who said this year that the USA's 15 million unemployment rate could be cut in half by taking jobs off 8 million illegal immigrants, and French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who used to say that the then 2 million immigrants in France were the reason for France's then 2 million unemployment rate, are wrong.

Of course, far right parties like the French NF are run by the least intelligent politicians in their countries, so it is to be expected that they should make incorrect statements like that. This Edinburgh University study found that BNP voters had a lower average IQ level than big 3 party, Green, SNP, and Plaid Cymru voters, and non-voters.

Because BNP type views appeal most to the least intelligent types of people, it is also thus to be expected that Green Party voters, who were found by the Edinburgh University researchers to have the highest average IQ level, have a more intelligent attitude to immigration than other types of voters, which is why the Green Party want to, for example, build a museum to highlight the contribution which immigrants have made to the UK.

Of course, the immigration causes unemployment myth, is part of a pattern of similar, relatively low intelligence, racist politician claims, by, in particular, BNP politicians, and all of those claims have to be refuted if racist parties are to be comprehensively defeated at the ballot box.

For example, the BNP win votes by moralising about Islamist terrorism when they may well have more terrorist connections than any other fascist party on the planet, as I showed in this article.

The BNP won votes after the expenses scandal by moralising about the corruption of the big 3 parties, but the BNP, and the also racist UKIP, are very corrupt, as I explained in this article.

The BNP wins also votes by moralising about violent Islamists, but both the leaders they have had, admired a now dead American fascist party leader who openly advocated killing all of the world's billions of non-white and Jewish people, as I pointed out in this article. Another way the BNP wins votes, is by moralising about crime, but their fascist ideology helps to create murderers and rapists, as I showed in this article. Moreover, BNP candidates and officials have a remarkable number of convictions for violent crime, as I explained in this article.

Finally, the BNP wins votes by moralising about Islamist extremism, when its founder was an admirer of Arnold Leese, a pre-World War 2 British fascist party leader who advocated gassing Jews long before the Nazis did (in 1928), as I pointed out in this article.

As these kinds of BNP moralising lead to not only an increase in BNP support, but also to racist and religious violence, and other hate crimes, it would be a good idea for anti-racist lawyers to sue the BNP for telling deliberate and malicious lies to incite racist and religious hatred, which
is the parent of racist and religious hate crimes. As I showed in this article, an American civil rights law firm has bankrupted numerous racist organisations and activists by suing them for compensation after hate crimes, but British law is stricter than American law, so it would be
possible to sue the BNP for not just engaging in hate crimes, but also for inciting hatred, which is why BNP leader Nick Griffin was successfully prosecuted for inciting racial hatred after he denied the Holocaust in a magazine.

Remember The Paris Massacre Of October 17th

Today is the 49th anniversary of the Paris Massacre of 1961. At 5pm, a rally and vigil is being held in Place Saint Michel in memory of the dozens of Algerian demonstrators murdered by the Paris police there (and in the days that followed).

The peaceful demonstration was being held by Algerians protesting in favour of independence for their country.

No-one knows how many died: Estimates range from 70 to 200. Dozens were drowned after being herded into the Seine – many after being beaten unconscious. Many more were beaten to death in the courtyard of the Headquarters of the Prefecture of Police.

Another, smaller, massacre took place the following year at the Charonne Metro Station. Nine members of the CGT Trade Union were murdered, also on the orders of Prefect of Police, Maurice Papon.

The cover up was swift and total. Papon ensured an almost complete news blackout of events. It wasn't until 1998 that the Government reluctantly conceded the events had taken place, and, even then, they only admitted to 40 deaths. Ironically, pressure had only become irresistible following the successful prosecution of Papon for War Crimes: His ordering the deportation of more than 1600 Jews from Bordeaux between 1942 and 1944.

It won't surprise anyone to learn that one of Papon's few remaining supporters at this time was Jean-Marie Le Pen, Head of the Front National and longtime political bedfellow of Nick Griffin.

The next time you're in Paris, walk over the Pont Saint-Michel to Notre Dame. It's beautiful. You'll also be walking on the site of the biggest peacetime massacre in Western Europe. There's a small, commemorative plaque on the Bridge.

It only appeared in 2001.

Neo-Nazis No Longer? Marine Le Pen Tones Down France's Far Right

The father of the French far-right National Front Party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a famously Holocaust-minimizing (he called the Nazi occupation of France "not particularly inhumane"), anti-immigrant and anti-European Union leader, is teetering toward retirement. But not before the National Front has yet another phoenix-like return from sworn obsolescence.

Political commentators throughout the middle of the last decade promised that the tough immigration policies of President Nicholas Sarkozy (at times so aggressive they seem pulled directly from the playbook of the extreme right) would siphon off voters from the right-wing margins and bring them under the umbrella of the center-right mainstream. Indeed, Sarkozy's controversial anti-burqa law (and fines that have already gone into affect) is believed to be meant to appease the rabid right wing. But while many far-right voters supported Sarkozy in the last elections, in the regional elections last month, the National Front surged ahead in the French rural areas, dampening any talk of their imminent demise.

Part of that success may be because the National Front has spent the last few years regrouping, reconsidering its position, and gently maneuvering a newer, younger, and, frankly, more beautiful face into the limelight. That new face belongs to Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie, and an elected member of the European Union Parliament for the last six years. "[S]he is widely expected to succeed Jean-Marie Le Pen as leader of the National Front, the persistent far-right party preaching French purity and exceptionalism, opposing immigration and the European Union, and which she wants to bring into the media age. More and more, she is the face of the party in television debates and national campaigning," The New York Times wrote last week. "She sees herself as having a destiny now, if not one so lofty as that of the party's emblem, Joan of Arc, chosen by Mr. Le Pen as a symbol of French sanctity and resistance to invaders."

In fact, Marine Le Pen, 41, has been jockeying for position behind her father for some years now, softening the image of the National Front with support for gay rights, women's rights, and, perhaps more surprisingly, given the history of the National Front, an outstretched hand to the Jewish community. (Whether they shake back is another story.)

As Anton Pelinka, professor of political science and nationalism studies at the Central European University in Budapest, and director of the Institute of Conflict Research in Vienna, told me a few years ago, "Europe has to be much more careful [than the United States] with respect to right-wing extremism, and for that reason, right-wing extremists claim to be something else - they claim to be much more moderate than they are in reality."

About five years ago, Marine began outspokenly condemning attacks on Jews by North African youth. "The French Jewish community, who are increasingly victims of attacks by Islamic radicals, should be able to turn to us for support," she told the Jerusalem Report in January 2005. It was a way of distancing herself from the other potential heir apparent to the head of the National Front, Bruno Gollnisch, a man who openly questioned the numbers of dead in the Holocaust - a means of minimizing the tragedy.

Marine also petitioned to march with the Jewish community of France after Ilan Halimi, a young Sephardi mobile phone salesman, was tortured and murdered by a rogue band of Muslim immigrants in January 2006. At first she was turned down, but some months later she marched alongside mainstream politicians in protest of the murder.

Le Pen's pushing back against the image of anti-Semitism - the British press has reported that Marine was furious with her father for his continued anti-Semitic outbursts - has been a smart move politically. Marine Le Pen knows well that the taint of anti-Semitism can roll back progress for a far-right party. "To be openly anti-Semitic," Anton Pelinka, the Austrian political scientist said, "even in Austria, could be the end of a political career" because of Europe's brutal 20th century history of the Holocaust. It has certainly marginalized her father – and by extension herself. She calls herself a victim of "collateral damage," from fallout around her father and her party's anti-Semitic statements.

Le Pen fille, has also spoken openly against both the hijab, or veil, and the burqa; she often makes what might be called a feminist argument for extreme right-wing politics - even though the far right has roots in conservative gender roles and Marine Le Pen herself - twice divorced and a working woman - is not particularly traditional. Of Muslim immigrants, "They have to adapt to our values," Marine Le Pen told me when I met her in the spring of 2006. We were at the headquarters of the National Front, in a suburb of Paris. "But our Republic must not adapt itself to Islam. Because some values do exist which are, effectively, contrary or opposite to ours. Equality between men and women is non-negotiable." She continued, "There are dozens of countries in the world that apply Sharia. But us, we will not change. You like it, or you don't like it. But you cannot [for example] attack a gay man because he is gay. Those, those are the values of France."

It is the traditional expression of National Front xenophobia on the one hand, and totally mainstream, on the other. Who on the left would argue against the point about gay men? Or equality between the sexes? That said, the context, purposefully, makes many uneasy. But that is the savvy oratory of the younger Le Pen.

"In France," Le Pen said, speaking in rapid French made husky by years of smoking, "our republic, our schools are facing pressure from radical and Islamist organizations. Teachers find it more and more difficult in some places to talk about the Holocaust. They can no longer evoke Darwin. Seriously! We cannot learn English. Because English is the language of imperialism. It is against this that we are fighting and that we accuse the French political class of having left this...to develop. To have done nothing to preserve our Republic and to firmly reaffirm the principles of the French Republic."

Knowing how the far right is perceived in French politics - in other words, badly, at best - Marine has continued to work to better her image. It particularly galled Le Pen the younger, a lawyer by training, as she watched the encroachment of then-interior minister and now-President Nicholas Sarkozy onto the traditional territory of the National Front. "We were the first to raise the alarm on globalization and its consequences," Le Pen told me. "We were the only ones to put in the center of the debate the problem of immigration by saying that the big influx of migrants was going to be the problem of the 21st century," she complained. "Some in the political class are looking to take over the branches of this debate for electoral reasons...I think they are saying the same thing we are saying to prevent us from saying it."

In 2006, Marine Le Pen launched a remake of her identity: by presenting, French style, a book, "A Contre Flots" - Against the Tide - and revealing, Oprah style, a weight loss and a new, more glamorous appearance. She is slim and nearly 6 feet tall. When we met she wore jeans and a filmy silk shirt. It is very unusual for a French politician to be so casually dressed when she meets with a journalist. Politicians are a class of people who favor well-tailored suits.

Marine Le Pen is seen as a softer alternative to the old guard of the far right. But there are those who question her Islamophobia, masked as feminism, and her attempts to modernize what has always been a bogeyman at the margins of French society. As Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right in France and a researcher at the Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégique, told me a few weeks after I met Madame Le Pen: "People on the far right say Europe is no longer Europe, it is becoming something new, colonized by Islam and the values of Islam. This is a massive fear, not only on the extreme right, but among average people. This gives fuel to the extreme right." Marine Le Pen draws on that fear, normalizes it, and channels it as she jockeys for position at the helm of the National Front.

Sarah Wildman at Politics Daily

French journalists' union calls for Le Pen debate to be scrapped

Union leaders demand cancellation of television debate featuring Marine Le Pen saying it would worsen social tension

French journalists' union leaders have demanded the cancellation of a live television debate featuring Marine Le Pen, the vice-president of the Front National, claiming it would be "a disgrace" for a public broadcaster to provide a platform for the far-right.

In echoes of the controversy over the appearance of BNP leader Nick Griffin on the BBC's Question Time in the autumn, the journalists' branch of the CGT union has said the proposed discussion – scheduled for tonight – should be taken off air. It says the clash, which will pit Le Pen against the immigration minister, Eric Besson, on the theme of "national identity", risked exacerbating existing social tensions which had already been aggravated by Nicolas Sarkozy's "big debate" on the same thorny subject.

"[This debate] between the representative of the extreme right and the figure who makes its ideas commonplace can only end badly," said union leader Jean-François Téaldi. A statement from the CGT said Sarkozy's national debate had "nationalistic, islamophobic and demagogic undertones".

However, France Télévisions, the public broadcaster, insisted the event would go ahead as planned. "It is the public service's function to organise debates. We are the only ones who do it," said Nathalie Saint-Cricq, editor-in-chief of the France 2 programme A vous de juger. Another executive insisted the programme would "not be a red carpet rolled out at the feet of Marine Le Pen".

But their assurances cut little ice with journalists. Téaldi said the appearance of the daughter and heir apparent of FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was irresponsible so close to regional elections in March.

"The national identity debate is getting out of control on the internet and in towns and is serving merely to boost votes for the Front National," he said. "A vous de juger will, with this debate, be airing arguments which will aggravate the social divide."

A poll commissioned by Le Monde and France 2 today indicated that, while over three-quarters of those surveyed said they "completely disagreed" with the ideas of the FN, the number of people saying they believed the far-right party to be a "danger" had decreased since 2006. Critics of Sarkozy's national identity debate say he has moved the debate on immigration to the right and made the ideas of Le Pen and his daughter more mainstream than they were before.

Guardian

BBC stands by Griffin invitation

The BBC tonight stood by its decision to invite British National Party leader Nick Griffin on to Question Time as its governing body debated 11th-hour attempts to block his appearance.

Tonight a specially-convened BBC Trust panel met to consider appeals against the ruling that his participation in the flagship political programme should go ahead. There has been widespread controversy about Mr Griffin's appearance on Question Time tomorrow, with a protest rally to be held in London tonight and further demonstrations planned during the filming of the show.

Today an academic warned Mr Griffin's appearance could boost support for the BNP as happened when French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen made his prime-time TV debut in the 1980s. But Ric Bailey, the BBC's chief political adviser, said the corporation would have been breaking its charter if it had not treated the BNP with impartiality. The decision to have Mr Griffin on Question Time was based on the party's success in June's European elections, at which it won more than 940,000 votes and two seats, he said.

"We absolutely stand by that judgment, even though there's obviously been a lot of controversy about it," he added.

Welsh Secretary Peter Hain wrote to the BBC Trust asking it to look again at the decision to allow the BNP to "the top table of UK politics". He argued the party is currently illegal because it does not allow ethnic minorities to join. His letter to the Trust was a last resort after BBC director general Mark Thompson rejected his arguments.

Mr Hain wrote that Mr Thompson "shows no willingness or ability to genuinely review his own decision" and was "too close to the decision". In response the Trust set up a special committee, chaired by former Newsnight editor Richard Tait, to consider first whether it can look at the appeals and then - if appropriate - to decide whether they should be upheld. The panel is expected to report back this evening.

Also appearing on tomorrow's Question Time, which will be filmed at BBC Television Centre in London, are Justice Secretary Jack Straw, shadow community cohesion minister Baroness Warsi, Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne and black writer Bonnie Greer.

Mr Bailey said the panel and audience for the show had been put together in the usual way.

"To all intents and purposes it's a normal programme," he said.

He declined to predict what would happen, saying: "Question Time is a spontaneous show, it's driven by the audience. The audience is very carefully selected, it's very difficult to predict how it will turn out."

Mr Hain will send a message of support to a Unite Against Fascism rally being held in central London tonight. The rally will feature poet and former children's laureate Michael Rosen, director of the Anne Frank Trust Gillian Walnes and Reverend and the Makers frontman Jon McClure.

Independent

Who do you think you are kidding...?

On the trail of the BNP as it makes its first, shambolic appearance at the European Parliament in Strasbourg

It is a humid July day in Strasbourg, and inside the Louise Weiss Building it feels like the start of school term. Journalists and politicians, assembled for the opening session of the European Parliament, are greeting each other like old friends outside the main debating chamber, known in a typical piece of EU jargon as the Hemicycle. Here, in the glass and pine atrium of this imposing cylindrical edifice - Britain's signature contribution to which is a garish floral carpet in the staff bar that bears more than a hint of cross-Channel ferry - you might spot Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the ex-revolutionary French Green and the closest thing the EU has to a pop star, strolling around with his entourage of admirers. Or Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party (Ukip), as he lambasts the rise of "the European military superpower" in front of assembled TV cameras. The atmosphere here, compared to Westminster, is open and collegiate.

Hidden away, however, at the end of a winding corridor on the top floor of an adjoining administrative block, a strange meeting is taking place. Convened by Andreas Mölzer of Austria's immigrant-hating Freedom Party, it is a meeting of the non-inscrits, the "non-attached" MEPs, from parties that have failed to make it into one of the mainstream coalitions. Aside from a few mavericks, such as Diane Dodds of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, this means the far right - including two of Britain's new crop of MEPs: Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons of the British National Party. Although the BNP is not a traditional fascist party or Nazi organisation, its constitution commits it to "restoring . . . the overwhelmingly white make-up of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948".

Earlier in the day, having travelled across France by car, Brons and Griffin had ­commanded the attention of the British press corps when they made their first, tentative appearance at the Hemicycle. Now they are due at a more furtive gathering. I remove my bright yellow press badge, slip it into my pocket, and watch an international assembly of bigots file into the conference room: Krisztina Morvai of Jobbik, the gypsy-hating Hungarian party with its own private, uniformed militia; the French Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National, along with his daughter Marine; assorted podgy members of Belgium's Flemish Interest and the Netherlands' Party for Freedom, both of which are anti-Islam.

Then, ambling down the corridor, come Griffin and Brons, accompanied by Simon Darby, the BNP's press officer, Jackie Griffin (wife of Nick) and a large minder in an ill-fitting suit. Outside the conference chamber stand a few men and women wearing tourist passes and speaking in French. One of them, barely out of his teens, clutches copies of a magazine titled Identitaires. This is the in-house magazine of the French sect Bloc Identitaire, which runs a Europe-wide "news" agency called Novopress that distributes far-right propaganda. Griffin walks up and shakes his hand. "We've met before, haven't we?" he says. They make slightly awkward conversation, the young man explaining that his group has "a good relationship" with the Front National. Griffin makes a vague offer to help get the magazine translated into English - "for those of us who are interested in identity", he says, sighing. They then follow the remaining members into the conference room.

The collection of oddballs on the other side of the door is the dirty secret of the European Parliament. In the family of nations that the parliament supposedly represents, the far right has long been the foul-mouthed elderly relative. In a way, Britain has simply caught up with the rest of Europe, which has grudgingly accepted the presence of a few extremists as part of the proportional representation electoral system.

But it is also part of a more disturbing narrative. Lívia Járóka, a Hungarian MEP of Roma origin, is particularly concerned at the support gained by Jobbik, which came third in her country's elections. "[Jobbik's success] has a lot to do with the current economic crisis. People feel very unsafe, so they are ready to accept answers with no real base in fact." She feels the best way to challenge their arguments is to confront them directly. "Rather than ignore the far right, we should try to show that what they are claiming is complete empty propaganda."

Little more than a month since the BNP was elected, its victory looks decidedly hollow. Its negotiations with other far-right parties, conducted at the parliament's other base in Brussels over the past month, have failed to round up enough allies to form an official coalition of MEPs. As a result, they have been denied any extra funding beyond the standard salary (a generous £63,000) and staffing allowance, nor will they have access to any influential positions, such as committee chair or vice-president of the parliament. At most, they will be able to obtain seats on parliamentary committees and use them as a platform to make grandstanding statements - assuming anyone is still listening in six months' time. Griffin, who believes climate change is "bollocks", has already got a seat on the environment committee.

While the BNP and its closest allies remain isolated, however, there has been a wider shift to the right since their electoral successes in June, and some ultranationalist elements have managed to insinuate themselves into the mainstream. This is largely thanks to the actions of two British parties - the Conservatives and Ukip.

Under the direction of David Cameron, the Tories quit the centre-right European People's Party to form a new, Eurosceptic coalition, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). Their main partner is Poland's socially conservative Law and Justice party, which has a well-documented record of anti-gay rhetoric. Its leader in the European Parliament, Michal Kaminski, was a member of the far-right, anti-Semitic National Revival of Poland in the late 1980s. In 2001, the US-based Anti-Defamation League accused him of having attempted to
stop the commemoration of a wartime pogrom against Jewish people in the Polish town of Jedwabne. Despite this, the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan this month described Kaminski on his blog for the Daily Telegraph as "a Thatcherite: a sturdy Polish patriot who is nonetheless, in outlook, almost a British Tory".

Not all of Hannan's colleagues share this view. Edward McMillan-Scott, a committed pro-European Tory MEP of 25 years, respected across the political divide, was expelled from the Tory group on 15 July when he stood against Kaminski in an election for vice-president of the parliament, and won. Kaminski was the ECR's official candidate for one of the EU's 12 vice-presidential posts, which are divided between the coalitions in what parliamentary insiders cheerfully refer to as a "stitch-up". EU etiquette frowns on MEPs who rock the boat by opposing members of their own coalitions.

Describing himself to me as a "loyal Tory", who spent the 1980s working in Poland with reformist groups, McMillan-Scott regrets going against the wishes of his party, but says he was compelled to do so by what he calls "the rise of respectable fascism" in Europe. He sees the alliance as a grave setback for Cameron's attempts to decontaminate the Conservative brand. "This is where the modern Conservative Party has to tread very carefully," McMillan-Scott tells me. "David Cameron has done a remarkable job in repositioning the party on most things. Its attitude to gays, or the environment, for example, has fundamentally changed. There's just the question of these links [to right-wing extremists in Europe] and one can't close one's mind to it."

To the Labour MEP Michael Cashman, this shows a lack of leadership on Cameron's part. "It suggests that Cameron is unable to control his MEPs and has shifted them where they want to go, which is further to the right."

Ukip's new friends are even more unsavoury. The party's major partner in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group, formed at the beginning of this month, is Italy's Lega Nord, which, despite being part of Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition at home, wants autonomy for northern Italy and has a track record of xenophobic and anti-gay statements. Other members of the group - described by Searchlight's Europe correspondent Graeme Atkinson as a "far-right-lite" coalition - include Greek and Slovak extreme nationalists. Nikki Sinclaire, Ukip's first openly lesbian MEP, concedes to having "reservations" about her new allies. "All the parties [of Freedom and Democracy] have signed up to a statement saying they oppose all forms of discrimination. But it is difficult. I think this is going to evolve over the next couple of months."

The Freedom and Democracy coalition is in part a shrewd move to block the more extreme far-right parties, such as the BNP, from forming
a coalition - Lega Nord was initially touted as a possible partner for the BNP. However, it creates a potentially more toxic alternative. Most of the British MEPs are now in alliances with extreme conservatives, with whom they will be seeking a common position on a range of issues, from equality legislation to the Convention on Human Rights.

Labour, meanwhile, faces severe problems. The party has only 13 MEPs left in the parliament - level with Ukip. The corresponding drop in funding (which is allocated according to the number of MEPs elected) has led to redundancies among auxiliary staff. Yet, despite the BNP's electoral success being largely down to a collapse in the Labour vote - even if most core Labour voters wouldn't dream of supporting the BNP, they helped it by staying away from the polls - none of the Labour MEPs I spoke to was willing to look beyond short-term causes. I suggested to Cashman, a former EastEnders actor who now represents the West Midlands, that Labour had lost the support of its working-class base. "Bullshit. The ascent of the BNP, along with the ascent of Ukip, can be traced directly to the timing of the Westminster expenses scandal," he said.

Richard Corbett, who lost his seat in Yorkshire and the Humber, where the BNP's Brons was elected, narrows it down even more. "The final nail in the coffin was Hazel Blears resigning [from the cabinet] the day before the election. It was a kick in the teeth to thousands of volunteers in the party and caused maximum damage - in our case, the difference was only a few thousand votes, so she really made that difference."

The damage now extends beyond the Labour Party. Griffin, Brons and their European allies may have failed to form an official grouping, but they share a strategy of trying to play down the overtly racist rhetoric and to influence mainstream debate. "We are treated like pariahs," Marine Le Pen tells me when I ask her what the Front National has in common with the BNP. "The traditional parties try to give us a completely warped image."

I eventually meet Griffin an hour or so after the majority of Britain's 72 MEPs have gathered for a drinks reception hosted by Glenys Kinnock, Britain's Europe minister. Griffin and Brons were pointedly not invited. The snub evidently hurt: throughout the opening week of parliament, journalists were treated to Griffin's witty riposte: "I would not want to share a drink with Glenys Kinnock. She is a political prostitute, simple as that."

Despite fears that the BNP would try to gatecrash the party, Griffin and Brons stayed away. Instead, they returned for a few hours to their "reasonably priced" hotel on the edge of the city, a low-budget dormitory surrounded by decrepit industrial buildings, where Jobbik's Krisztina Morvai also stayed.

When we meet in a busy lobby back at the parliament, the pair come across as rather shambolic. Brons, a retired teacher who used to be in the National Front, burbles along in conversation, quoting de Tocqueville and Voltaire. Griffin has a gift for the soundbite but in longer conversations tends to stare at the floor and rant circuitously. I get lost for a while during a passionate discourse on the genetic similarities of human beings to chimpanzees - and why this means we're all bound to kill each other one day unless we maintain ethnic purity. What is interesting about his language is the way in which he manipulates the fears of a declining 21st-century industrial society. He talks of shadowy "global businesspeople" (as opposed to a global financial system), presents human cultures as endangered species (rather than as products of our collective activities), and refers to the apocalyptic threat of peak oil (but not, as we know, climate change).

The suggestion that Britain has benefited from immigration is dismissed as "self-hating racism", but to avoid accusations of racism on his own part, Griffin takes cultural relativism to an extreme. He deplores the "Islamification of Britain", but says Muslims are free to behave as they like "in their own countries. We don't have a right to interfere". Indeed, in his maiden speech, given during a parliamentary debate on Iran, Griffin appeared to defend President Ahmadinejad's regime, describing the pro-democracy protests as a cover for "a third illegal and counterproductive attack by the west on the Muslim world".

Although the BNP's view of society makes no class distinctions, Griffin appeals to "working-class Britons" when it suits him. One word that crops up repeatedly in his analyses is "elite" - as in "the EU is an elite project which has no connection with reality". The other place I notice the use of the word that day is in an email to members of the BNP's mailing list, purporting to come from a "Chairman Nick Griffin MEP". It offers readers a chance to make a donation and become a "Gold member". "Gold members are the 'elite' of the Party," the email says. "They go that extra mile and quite rightly display their Gold membership badge with pride at Party meetings and events." The badge "also makes a superb addition to any type of clothing, whether a suit or casual".

Despite his party's commitment to British withdrawal from the EU, Griffin tries to strike a conciliatory tone. "We're going to engage here, because although we believe Britain should be withdrawn, you can't have this many people together and not come up sometimes with something that is actually a good idea."

I had had an insight the previous day into the far right's idea of what it means to "engage" at the meeting of non-inscrits, the aim of which was to nominate one group member who could speak on behalf of the others at official engagements. Waiting outside the meeting, I listened as the murmured voices became louder and more strained. Then a row erupted. It went on and on. A posh English voice filled the corridor, followed by the smoker's rasp of Marine Le Pen, and then that of her father, shouting in French. Le Pen Sr yelled at the chair of the meeting: "You are a civil servant! I am an elected representative!" The chair replied: "Monsieur, if you carry on like this then I will have to close the session."

Soon after that, the voices stopped. A group of interpreters exited from a side door, laughing. As they passed, I heard one say to the others, mockingly, "And they say dictatorship would be a bad idea . . .".

New Statesman

Le Pen sells party HQ to Chinese

Le Pen looking glum

France's anti-immigrant party, the National Front, is selling its headquarters to a Chinese university, according to the party leader.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has confirmed that the party base has been purchased by a Shanghai university.

Mr Le Pen, 79, has campaigned to become president several times under the slogan "Keep France for the French". But his party faces growing financial difficulties. It has already sold its bullet-proof car on eBay. The party has a total debt of some 9m euros ($13.4m; £7m), according to French newspaper Le Monde, partly due to a poor showing in the 2007 legislative elections which meant it had to cover its own campaign costs.

"A formal sale offer has been signed with a university in Shanghai," the National Front's press service said, quoted by AFP.

The unnamed Chinese higher education institution has reportedly paid between 12 and 15m euros ($18 - 22m; £9.4m - 11.7m) for the sprawling mansion in the western Paris suburb of Saint Cloud, known as The Cruiseliner. The university is reportedly considering turning the building into a French language school. The building, thought to be the party's biggest asset, was inherited from a millionaire supporter in the 1970s.

The organisation has already had some bank accounts frozen after disagreements with creditors.

Right-wing firebrand Mr Le Pen startled Europe by reaching the second round of the 2002 presidential election. In 2007, he achieved some 10% of votes in the presidential race.

BBC

French National Front's bank account frozen

France's far-right National Front party no longer has access to "a single euro" after its bank accounts were frozen due to a payment dispute with its printers.

The companies owned by Fernand Le Rachinel, a National Front (FN) Euro MP, have not received full payment for posters and campaign material from the 2007 parliamentary elections, in which the party suffered a drubbing.

A lawyer of party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen said that the printing companies were suing the FN and its leader for 803,482 euros (£630,000), and that a bailiff had frozen its accounts - meaning it could not take out a single euro. The party contends that the firms overcharged it. The amount is only a fraction of the 6.7 million euros (£5.3 million) which the FN owes Mr Le Rachinel for funding its parliamentary campaign.

The FN has been on the verge of bankruptcy since last year's elections, as most of its candidates failed to win the five per cent of the votes needed to have their campaign costs reimbursed by the state. Support for the FN plummeted to 4.3 per cent last year from an average of more than 10 percent in previous years, after President Nicolas Sarkozy's charm offensive to the far-Right saw much of its electoral base jump ship.

Mr Le Pen's lawyer said the FN was unable to pay the bill before a June 30 deadline, as it had not yet sold its vast headquarters in a chic Parisian suburb – for which it hopes to get 20 million euros (£16 million). Mr Le Pen, 79, recently auctioned off his bullet-proof car for 20,500 euros (£16,000) to reduce debts.

The veteran leader shocked France and Europe in 2002 by finishing second in presidential elections, but fell to a dismal fourth last year with less than 11 per cent of the vote - his worst showing since 1974.

Telegraph

People like him voting BNP

Arguments have raged over the decision by local newspapers in London to accept an advertisement from the British National Party last week. Searchlight is more interested in the “wholesome” white family that featured in the ad alongside the slogan “People Like You Voting BNP”.

For a start the adults of the family will certainly not be voting BNP in the London elections on 1 May. That’s not because they don’t support the BNP – they do. This is the family of Nick Cass, a longstanding BNP organiser and local election candidate, from that well known London suburb of … West Yorkshire! In this year’s elections he is standing for Kirklees Council as the BNP candidate in Mirfield.

In the newspaper ad, Cass is wearing a dark jacket. When he appeared in the Sky TV programme BNP Wives in January, he was having a massage, which gave us the chance to find out whether his nazism was more than skin deep. For prominent on his right arm, between shoulder and elbow, is a “tree of life” tattoo.

This symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide, several of which have adopted it as their logo. Under Hitler it was the symbol of the SS Lebensborn project, which encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with “Aryan” mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans. To white supremacists today the tree of life signifies the future of the “white race”.

The BNP’s slogan also is not quite what it seems. In fact it was copied from the Front National in France, the leader of which, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has convictions for hate crime and Holocaust denial. Like Cass, Le Pen is not a man Londoners will readily identify with.

Many people have condemned the editors of the various newspapers that ran the BNP ad. Searchlight has discovered that in many cases the decision was imposed on the editors by the papers’ owner, Archant, which describes itself as “the UK’s largest independently-owned regional media business”. Its portfolio includes many London titles including the Hampstead and Highgate Express, the Hackney Gazette, the Barking and Dagenham Post and the Recorder group of papers in East London.

But Archant is unlikely to be to blame for the strange appearance of the BNP ad. The Cass family photo is strangely elongated, as if the designer was unclear how to resize a picture to fit the space. Now the BNP’s chief designer is one Mark Collett of Leeds, a man widely derided in the BNP as incompetent. We see what they mean.

The BNP are definitely not people like us.

Searchlight

Apathy could give BNP a foothold

The British National Party's results in a string of recent elections demonstrate it is no longer a force simply to be ignored.

Although the party has yet to succeed in securing a single councillor in Sussex, it is fielding more candidates than before who are receiving a growing share of the vote. Elsewhere in the country, BNP councillors are becoming increasingly entrenched in the political landscape. But name-calling is not the answer, says local government correspondent Lawrence Marzouk. Voters must wake up to the fact that apathy is the ally of the BNP.

In April 2002, French Front National candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen scooped an extraordinary 20 per cent of the popular vote to enter a second round run-off against the then president Jacques Chirac. France was convulsed by the shocking result. Protesters took to the streets in disgust at the ageing extremist's anti-immigration policies and in guilt at the apathy which resulted in a record low turnout.

Le Pen was beaten convincingly at the second trip to the ballot box.

But the lesson of the first round was clearly learnt as, five years on, 85 per cent of the adult population performed their democratic duty at the next presidential election and the far-right's share of the vote was halved.

In Britain, we continue to dismiss the British National Party as an irrelevance.

The party does not have the political clout the Front National in France does but the parallels are there, and this particular French lesson seems to have been lost in translation.

Mainstream politicians have failed to convince swathes of the public of their message on immigration. Labour, Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats still do not to field candidates in some byelections. And the voting public continue to operate on the assumption that their votes count for nothing as politicians, and the policies on offer, are all the same.

In February, BNP member Donna Bailey missed out on the hotly-contested Upper Beeding Parish Council seat in West Sussex by just 20 votes.

In last weekend's Arun District Council by-election, BNP candidate Albert Bodle, who runs the Selwood Lodge guest house in Victoria Drive, Bognor, polled third with 205 votes. Second was Lib Dem David Jones with just seven extra ticks at the ballot box. Labour failed to field a candidate.

The BNP has fielded candidates for a raft of by-elections in the past year, scoring hundreds of votes each time, and is expected to play a part in May's local elections.

Its success remains modest compared to the big three and should not be overstated.

But a strategy of targeting minor by-elections where major parties often fail to field candidates and turn-out is poor ensures the party takes a disproportionately large slice of the vote.

These results strengthen the BNP's claims that they are now part of mainstream politics and, consequently, their appeal to a wider audience.

But their improved showing is also a result of the public's disenchantment with politics and a feeling the BNP is the only party to be fighting for the rights of white, British voters who are under siege from a growing alien population.

This is fuelled by a sometimes irresponsible media, which peddles negative stereotypes of asylum seekers and pushes the idea that Britain is a soft-touch for "foreign scroungers".

Statistics have become so politicised that it impossible to separate fact from fiction.

The BNP has stepped into this political vacuum following a comprehensive makeover in recent years. The public rants have been replaced by carefully crafted statements, which do not talk of race explicitly.

The party is presenting a face of reasonable, educated, middle aged men and women who do not hate foreigners but are fighting for traditional British values.

This veneer of respectability has brought the party out from the margins of society and opened the door for quiet sympathisers to become loud supporters and voters. A strong line against immigration and those who remain illegally in the country clearly has resonance among many voters.

But behind the slick websites and new image, many of the policies remain as abhorrent as ever to the bulk of the British public.

The party continues to advocate that you cannot really be British if you do not have the "British genotype".

This argument, along with the use of an arbitrary definition of what constitutes an indigenous British person, is just xenophobia dressed up as laughable pseudo-science. The genetic make-up and cultural norms of those living in Britain are nebulous concepts, constantly evolving under the influence of a range of factors, including immigration.

There has been a disorienting speed of change concerning immigration over the past 50 years and this should not be ignored.

Mainstream politicians must show convincingly that they are protecting and enhancing British culture and society and promoting integration and the English language.

Immigration should also be dealt with head-on with credible policies so it cannot be hijacked by the BNP.

The country is not being "swamped" by new arrivals but the perception is as damaging as the reality and clearer independent statistics need to be successfully communicated.

As a hard-working, proud, British citizen, born to an English mother and Lebanese father, I find the suggestion that I am somehow undesirable in this country, and that my children will never be British, ridiculous and insulting.

The BNP may tell you it is not racist but its views on discouraging mixed marriages and shipping out as many foreigners as possible to preserve the purity of the "British genotype" are about as extreme as they come.

These are not the views of a mainstream party offering sensible policies on the issue of immigration.

Vigorous campaigning and fighting voter fatigue will ensure the very real concerns about immigration do not translate into a vote for extremism. We ignore the BNP at our own peril. Apathy could create a British repeat of Le Pen's shock election result.

The Argus

French far-right leader sentenced

French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen has been given a three-month suspended jail term for playing down the Nazi occupation of France.

Le Pen, who was also fined 10,000 euros (£7,400), described the occupation as "not especially inhumane".

Le Pen, 79, is the leader of the French far-right party, the National Front. He reached a surprise second-place finish in the 2002 French presidential election, after beating the socialist candidate in the first round.

Le Pen's remarks were made in an interview with the far-right magazine Rivarol in January 2005. Elsewhere in the article he described the 1944 massacre of 86 people in the town of Villeneve d'Ascq as the actions of a junior officer "mad with rage", and praised the Gestapo for its role in the incident.

The French court ruled that Le Pen had denied a crime against humanity and had been complicit in condoning war crimes.

This is not the first time that Le Pen has faced legal sanctions for making controversial comments about the actions of the Nazis. In 1987 he was fined for describing the Nazi gas chambers as a "detail of history".

BBC

Far-right group destroyed by insult

Far-right politicians in the European Parliament will lose tens of thousands of euros to promote their ideas because their political group collapsed when five Romanian MEPs quit. The Identity, Sovereignty and Tradition group disbanded after ten months because the number of its members had fallen under 20, the minimum needed to form a political group, the EU legislature said.

The ITS included Jean-Marie Le Pen of France and Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the Italian wartime Fascist dictator. The seeds of the group’s collapse were sown last week when she insulted the Romanian people, a Romanian ITS member said.

The Greater Romania Party (PRM) said that her insults came in comments about the expulsion of dozens of Romanians from Italy after a Romanian Gypsy was arrested last week over the murder of the wife of an Italian naval officer. Ms Mussolini was reported to have said: “Breaking the law has become a way of life for Romanians.” The demise of the grouping was welcomed by EU mainstream parties.

Times Online

Humiliation for Le Pen as party is forced to sell HQ

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far-right leader, said his party is in "serious financial crisis" and might have to sell its headquarters.

Such a step would be a devastating psychological blow to the National Front as it struggles to come to terms with its failures in the April and June elections and the changed political landscape of the Sarkozy era.

M. Le Pen, 79, already faces deep internal dissent as he approaches a party conference next month which will be asked to extend his leadership for another three years. Last week, one of the party's own Euro MPs – and biggest creditors – placed a legal hold on the future of the party headquarters overlooking the river Seine at Saint Cloud, west of Paris.

For more than 20 years, the National Front has been the most successful far-right and xenophobic party in any large country in western Europe. With the arrival of President Nicolas Sarkozy's brand of populist, but largely moderate, right-wing politics, its electoral appeal has been severely squeezed.

The party's finances have been plunged deeply into the red by its poor performances in the presidential and, above all, the parliamentary polls earlier this year. The NF took out large loans to finance its campaigns, expecting to repay them from state subsidies.

The size of public subsidies to political parties in France depends mostly on the percentage of votes cast in parliamentary elections. The NF share of the vote slumped to 4.29 per cent nationwide, compared to 11.3 per cent in 2002 and nearly 15 per cent in 1997.

In a radio interview yesterday, M. Le Pen said that electoral failure had "cost" his party between ¿10m (£6.9m) and ¿12m. The National Front was "not bankrupt" but was "in a severe financial crisis". If the party could not raise new loans or reschedule its debts, he said, it would "perhaps be obliged to sell" its prestigious, modern office block in Saint Cloud.

These offices, known as le paquebot (the steamship), because of their vaguely nautical look, are worth up to ¿20m. When purchased in 1994, the paquebot was a symbol of the upward mobility of a party which had risen from nowhere to challenge the alleged "corrupt" stranglehold of the left-right elite.

A distress sale would foreshadow the end of the Le Pen era – and according to some internal critics – the possible disintegration of the National Front itself.

In recent weeks, a slow-motion leadership struggle has begun for the succession to M. Le Pen. He will seek, and win, another three-year term as party president next month but even the indestructible M. Le Pen has publicly admitted that this may be the last lap of a 60-year political career.

He has let it be known, for the first time, that he would like to be succeeded by his daughter, Marine, 39. This has angered the hard-line xenophobic and the ultra-conservative Catholic wings of the NF. They place the blame for their electoral reverses largely on Marine Le Pen's attempts to remould the NF as a softer, more modern, nationalist party open to young professional people and even to different races. They complain that this allowed Nicolas Sarkozy to seize, almost without opposition, some of the NF's most successful themes: national pride, traditional moral values and a hard-line on crime and immigration.

The party's former secretary-general Carl Lang has announced that he will not challenge M. Le Pen for the leadership next month but has said that he will challenge Marine Le Pen in three years' time.

In the meantime, he warned, M. Le Pen must make room in the party hierarchy for hardliners like himself. "If not, the process of uniting the different elements of the French national right will happen elsewhere."

Independent

MEP jailed for benefit fraud

A British MEP was jailed for nine months today for falsely claiming more than £65,000 in benefits.

Ashley Mote, an independent MEP for south-east England who formerly represented Ukip, was found guilty of 21 charges of deception at Portsmouth crown court. Despite the sentence, Mote will retain his seat in the European parliament. MEPs are only disqualified from office if they receive jail terms of more than 12 months.

Mote, 71, was found guilty of eight charges of false accounting, eight of obtaining a money transfer by deception, four of evading liability and one of failing to notify a change of circumstances. He was acquitted of a further four charges.

The judge, Richard Price, said he had taken into consideration the defendant's age in determining the length of the jail term, as well as sentencing advice provided by the government because of prison overcrowding. The judge told the MEP that his situation was a "tragedy" and, despite his work in the European parliament, the charges of which Mote had been found guilty could "only be met by a custodial sentence - nothing else would be appropriate".

The Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, said he was "disgusted and horrified" by what he called the "leniency" of the sentence.

"If he had been jailed for more than a year, the seat could have been reassigned to Ukip. As it is, the voters in the south-east will see taxpayers' money going to a man serving a prison sentence, unable to represent them."

Mr Farage said Mote, who earns £60,277 a year as an MEP, should step down.

"I know it's far too much to expect, but if this man had a shred of decency or integrity left, he'd resign."

The four-week trial heard that Mote ran a once successful business which collapsed in 1989.

He began to claim income support, housing benefits and council tax benefits but failed to notify the benefits agency when he began earning money through various enterprises, including spread betting on currency markets from February 1996 to September 2002, during which time he received £73,000 in benefits.

The court heard he used this money to pay off credit card debts that he had run up funding an "extravagant lifestyle", including restaurant dinners, private healthcare and holidays to the US, France and the Caribbean.

Mote, who was elected in 2004, came to attention early in the year when he signed up to the neo-fascist "Identity, Sovereignty and Tradition" European parliament grouping, which also includes Jean-Marie Le Pen, of the French National Front, and similarly far-right groups from Italy, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

Ukip had already withdrawn its whip by then because of the impending benefit fraud trial.

Guardian

France's Front National faces ruin as Sarkozy steals Le Pen's clothes

France's xenophobic, anti-immigrant National Front party is facing financial ruin, with its vote set to crash in parliamentary elections tomorrow.

The far-right party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen looks like being swept aside by "la vague bleue" - the blue wave of support for the conservative UMP party of newly elected president Nicolas Sarkozy.

While the UMP is tipped to win up to 430 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, giving Mr Sarkozy a free reign to implement his "economic revolution", the National Front's performance is expected to be so poor it may lose its vote-dependent state subsidy of £3.1 million. The party now faces the prospect of selling its Paris headquarters.

In last month's presidential elections, Mr Le Pen lost nearly a million votes in comparison with 2002, scoring 10 per cent of the ballot in his worst result since 1974. This downward trend is expected to be confirmed in this month's parliamentary vote and in elections for municipal and regional councils, where the National Front is only expected to win between 3 and 8 per cent of the vote.

Even in its stronghold of Provence in southern France - where the National Front has won between 20 and 25 per cent of the vote and once controlled four city councils - the party is expected to see its vote cut in half.

The meltdown can be explained in a name: Nicolas Sarkozy.

The UMP leader has appropriated Mr Le Pen's rhetoric on immigration and law and order, creating a new ministry of immigration and national identity and stealing 38 per cent of the far-right winger's 2002 voters in last month's presidential polls. Mr Sarkozy enjoys 88 per cent popularity among National Front supporters, polls show.

Despite turning 79 later this month, Mr Le Pen refuses to relinquish his position as party leader.

The bickering Socialists are set to face further humiliation after the defeat of presidential candidate Ségolène Royal with their number of seats possibly falling as low as 115. Centrist Francois Bayrou is forecast to win only a handful of seats for his new Democratic Movement party after most of his MPs defected to Mr Sarkozy. The French Communist Party is also in danger of losing nine of its current 21 deputies after a disastrous result of less than 2 per cent in the presidentials.

The Scotsman

Vote for democracy

In France, the Front National did badly in the recent elections. But how can we prevent the BNP from gaining seats tomorrow?

By Alexander Goldberg

Jean-Marie Le Pen is in a real strop this week and all because an additional 5.5 million people went out to vote in the first round of the presidential election this year, in comparison to 2002. The leader of the extremist far-right Front National had hoped to repeat his success of five years ago, when he came second in the first round of the elections and went into a run-off with President Chirac.

France has done much soul-searching as a result of the 2002 result. Activists concerned about the state of French democracy were shocked into action and embarked on one of the biggest voter registration campaigns, especially in the large ethnic Arab districts of Paris.

The result? With 3.3 million new voters on the roll and an 85% turnout, Le Pen was relegated to fourth place with his percentage vote cut dramatically. One can only presume that retirement looms for the 78-year-old bigot.

Given France's current economic woes and concerns, the conventional wisdom was that extremist parties would perform better than five years ago. Thankfully, this has not been the case. Instead, France has categorically demonstrated that in modern democracies, a robust voter turnout is critical in stemming the advance of extremist parties, who tend to thrive whenever voter turnout is low.

Back in Britain we have local elections this week. Even the ever-cautious political pundit Andrew Marr stated this week that voter turnout would be below 50%. I fear that Andrew may be right. Time after time the statistics surrounding electoral politics tend to reinforce the same lesson: extremist and racist groups succeed best when voter turnout ranges between 25% and 30% of registered voters. Moreover, the Electoral Commission has suggested that the real extent of voter apathy is hidden by the fact that an estimated 9% of the population do not bother registering in the first place, rising to one-third in some inner city areas.

The British National party (BNP), which has aspirations of turning itself into an electoral success along the lines of Front National, is fielding a record 752 candidates across England and Wales. It hopes to increase on the 53 seats it holds, following significant gains made last year.

And while the BNP has tried to rebrand itself in recent years along the lines of Front National, little, in fact, has changed.

The BNP has its roots in fascist movements (BNP founder John Tyndall proclaimed Hitler's Mein Kampf his Bible). Even its current leader Nick Griffin was convicted of incitement to racial hatred in 1998, while according to the BBC's Panorama investigation other leaders have been arrested for such crimes as sending razor blades in the post, carrying CS gas, assault, theft, burglary and possession. Not exactly your conventional campaign tactics. Watchdogs such as Searchlight highlight time and again that the BNP's core platform has remained one that espouses hate.

My guess is that most voters are attracted to the BNP less for ideological reasons than as a protest against mainstream parties and failing town halls. In addition, the BNP gains from voters who decide not to absent themselves from local elections and tends to do better with a low turnout. Meanwhile, it abandons wards where it is resoundingly beaten.

We need to learn from last week's election in France and apply it here. In the long run we need to work on voter registration, but this week we need to get out and vote on May 3. It is not just local services and recycling schemes that are at stake, but the future of democracy.

Edmund Burke, himself an observer of French politics, perhaps said it best: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

The Guardian's Comment Is Free

Le Pen tells lustful teens the answer is in their hands

He has advocated patriotism and zero immigration, but the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen this week came up with a new way for young people to serve their country: masturbation.

Asked at a debate whether condoms should be distributed in high schools, he resorted to Latin to suggest that restless teenagers might take the problem into their own hands. He advised "those worked up" to resort to "manu militari". "It's a much simpler method," Mr Le Pen pronounced.

Mr Le Pen, whose daughter and campaign manager, Marine, has been softening the party's image and attempting to attract women with more policies on the family, was attending a debate organised by Elle magazine, entitled "What women want".

The 78-year-old former paratrooper and National Front leader faced protests and heckling on his arrival at the event at the elite graduate school, Sciences Po. After telling the audience that women faced a "social handicap", he responded to boos by shouting: "Bunch of imbeciles!"

But his remarks do not appear to have hurt his electoral chances. Yesterday, his approval rating hit its highest level of the campaign so far, with a survey in Le Parisien giving him 16% - only 0.8% less than the shock score that catapulted him into the second round run-off against Jacques Chirac in 2002. The rightwing former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy was in the lead with 26% followed by the Socialist Ségolène Royal on 23.5% and the centrist François Bayrou on 21%.

Yesterday Mr Le Pen made a surprise visit to a multi-racial housing estate north of Paris telling a crowd: "We want to help you get out of these suburban ghettos where French politicians have parked you."

Mr Le Pen was not the only candidate seeking to explain colourful use of language yesterday. Mr Sarkozy came under attack from a former ally who says he called him "an arsehole" and "an unfaithful bastard" during the riots crisis of 2005. Azouz Begag makes the accusation in a new book.

Guardian

Hacker steals data from French presidential candidate

A hacker stole sensitive data from a computer in the offices of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, police said, fueling his fears that rivals used it to try and keep him out of the presidential race

The security breach at Le Pen's National Front party headquarters comes as the campaign intensified ahead of the April and May election with several candidates facing smear scandals in recent weeks.

Le Pen, who shocked France by finishing second in the 2002 presidential election, is struggling to secure the backing of at least 500 elected officials needed to run this time round. He says he has been the target of a well-prepared offensive to persuade the officials, including mayors, not to sign and asked police to open an investigation after suspecting that a mole might have leaked the names of his potential backers.

After a visit to the headquarters of his National Front party on Friday, the police said the list of officials who had agreed to back Le Pen had been stolen by a hacker. The hacker had gained access using an Internet site specializing in breaking entry codes. A National Front employee who used the computer that was hacked into was detained but later released.

News of the electronic break-in, came just a week after the Socialist party demanded an investigation into what it said was a spate of burglaries targeting its campaign team.

Le Pen has until March 16 to gain the sponsorship of at least 500 of France's 42,000 elected representatives, including parliamentarians and mayors, to become a candidate. He says he is 100 short and has accused a far-right rival of trying to poach his sponsors.

Despite his success in 2002, when he won 16.8 percent of the vote, Le Pen's National Front party does not have any mayors and he has criss-crossed France for months to find backers.

Supporters of mainstream conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy have appeared increasingly uneasy at the prospect of Le Pen being blocked from running. They believe National Front supporters will prove a vital pool of potential voters in an expected second-round run off between Sarkozy and Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, and fear a high abstention rate if Le Pen is shut out of the first round.

Among other candidates who may not make the sponsorship grade are anti-globalization leader Jose Bove who says he has accumulated just 350 signatures. Greens candidate Dominique Voynet says she has 500 pledges, but only 15 returned forms.

The candidates fear some mayors will not come good on their promises and say they need at least 600 pledges to feel safe.

CNet