Ever since the results of the last European Parliament elections in 2014, when Marine Le Pen began referring to her far-right party as “the first party of France,” the political establishment has been working its way through the seven stages of grief. The morning after the elections, prominent French author Jean-Marie Rouart expressed his shock in Paris Match and his disbelief in the fact that over 4.7m French people had cast their votes in favour of the Front National: “We’re suddenly seized by the sense of irreversibility, of the irreparable, some would say...” Today, most mainstream politicians and commentators seem arrested in the Denial phase, with Anger, Bargaining, Guilt and Depression still barring their way to Acceptance and Hope.
The fact is, whether they like it or not, Le Pen’s agenda—immigration, law and order and national identity—now dominates political debate and this includes France’s position within the European Union, one of the nation’s sacred cows. Like its military and civilian nuclear policy, France’s pro-European consensus runs deep and stems directly from its experience of the Second World War. Framed under Charles de Gaulle in the a ermath of the Nazi Occupation and Philippe Pétain’s ignominious “National Revolution,” the European project served as an antidote to collective humiliation. Piloted by Jean Monnet, a pillar of Free France, it began life as a never-again stance against nationalism and has always been sold to the French as a cultural and political ideal, rather than a commercial proposition, as it has always been to the British.
Leggete l'articolo completo e molti altri in questo numero di
Prospect Magazine
Opzioni di acquisto di seguito
Se il problema è vostro,
Accesso per leggere subito l'articolo completo.
Singolo numero digitale
April 2016
 
Questo numero e altri numeri arretrati non sono inclusi in un nuovo
abbonamento. Gli abbonamenti comprendono l'ultimo numero regolare e i nuovi numeri pubblicati durante l'abbonamento. Prospect Magazine