France's war leader has found his real enemy is at home – in the shape of a new, female Le Pen
The flavour of defeat … not in Libya, where French Rafale jets were the first sent into Gaddafi's airspace on Saturday, but in French polling booths. For Nicolas Sarkozy it was a strange weekend, starting with a self-confident president wearing his new clothes as commander-in-chief, and ending with what must have felt like betrayal from his fellow citizens.
The clear winner of the élections cantonales, a local government poll seen as a test almost a year before the presidential election, is not the left – although it came out leading: it is Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Front. For the first time, the party created by her father came out neck and neck with the president's UMP – which in more than 50 constituencies didn't even make it to the second round.
This will leave a bitter taste in Sarkozy's mouth. In 2007, one of his major successes was to reduce the National Front to a one-digit score in the first round of the presidential election, bringing back "lost voters" to the traditional right. But, disillusioned, they have returned en masse to the Le Pen brand. With Marine Le Pen running for president next year, alarm bells are ringing in French political circles. Not because she could be elected president – that will never happen – but because of the devastating effect she is having on everyone else's strategy.
France lived through a nightmare in 2002 when Marine's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, came second in the first round of the presidential election – an outcome not predicted by opinion polls. The French left decided to support the president, Jacques Chirac, in the second round, mobilising "republican discipline" against the "fascist threat". Chirac was sent to the Elysée Palace for the second time with an unprecedented 80% of the vote.
"Never again" was the slogan back then, but that did not account for Marine Le Pen and Sarkozy's failure. Le Pen has a unique political recipe, and a few personal assets. Her party has never been in government, and therefore has no part in the economic and social crisis. She makes sure everyone remembers that left and right have juggled power for 30 years of unemployment, urban ghettos, insecurity and public debt. During a TV debate with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the maverick leader of a leftwing splinter group, she made sure to call him Monsieur le ministre – recalling his spells in past socialist cabinets and reminding everyone that he's one of them.
During another primetime debate, the scene was unreal. Four mainstream political leaders, from the UMP to the Socialists, were sitting in the studio. Looming large over them was the image of Marine Le Pen on a video screen. There she was, laughing all the way to the polling booths as the four men discussed ways of diminishing her influence; this blond woman looked down on them, declaring them collectively to blame for everything wrong in this society.
Le Pen has ditched her father's more provocative side, once an asset but now a burden to the National Front's new generation. While her father called the gas chambers of the second world war a "detail" in history, she described the Holocaust as the worst episode of the 20th century. She has tried to reposition the Front as an acceptable anti-establishment movement, a quietly populist and almost respectable party to the "right of the right".
Her early successes provoked panic in the presidential camp, and an ill-advised President Sarkozy decided to fight her on her own ground. This resulted in last year's highly publicised expulsion campaign directed at France's Roma population, tough new security laws, and an increasingly anti-Islamic tone. Only last week Claude Guéant, the interior minister and a close ally of Sarkozy, said that he shared the view that more and more French did not "feel at home" with "uncontrolled immigration". Marine Le Pen reacted by joking that he could now join her party.
President Sarkozy faces a huge dilemma: with his personal ratings at their lowest in the opinion polls, will he continue with a strategy that has brought him political defeat and moral discredit? If so, the left has to show that it can be a credible alternative to a discredited right. It is fighting to recover from a series of defeats and must confront a divided leadership, a glut of presidential candidates, and a programme that does not generate enthusiasm.
The answer to those conundrums will shape the future of French politics. But on Sunday night, when the UMP's defeat had become clear, Jean-François Copé, its secretary-general, refused a repeat of the "Republican pact" of 2002: UMP voters will not be called to vote for the left in a Socialist-National Front duel. An ominous sign.