French PM Calls Voters to Support Rival Party in Three Regions

France’s Socialist Party on Monday said its candidates would fall on their swords in three regions to try and prevent the far-Right Front National from clinching historic electoral victories next Sunday.

Marine Le Pen’s National Front won more votes than mainstream rivals in the first round of regional elections at the weekend.

“French people have had enough – in one election after another, they have shown their confidence in the National Front”, she said.

Le Pen’s hardline stances on Islam and immigration resonated with voters after the terrorist attacks in Paris last month.

The consequences of this approach have been predictably risible: because the Left has gone missing on the problem of Islamism, preferring to blame the entire phenomenon on foreign policy and often adopting the aforementioned neo-Orientalist mindset, the European far-Right has been able to portray itself as the only reliable foe of Islamist radicalism.

The polls forecast that the National Front won 30.8 percent of the vote. It is hoping the regional elections will consolidate political gains Le Pen has made in recent years, and strengthen its legitimacy as she prepares to seek the presidency in 2017.

Le Pen is campaigning to run the northern Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, which includes the port city of Calais, a flashpoint in Europe’s migrant drama.

The FN nationally took almost 28 percent of the vote, while the right-wing grouping including Sarkozy’s party were on nearly 27 percent, and the Socialists and their allies garnered 23 percent.

The National Front led in six of the 12 regions of mainland France, The Republicans in four and the Socialists in two.

The National Front’s victory isn’t yet secure. “We have the vocation to achieve the national unity that the country requires”, she said.

The anti-immigration party did well in Sunday’s first round of the elections.

“We must hear and understand the profound exasperation of the French people”, he said.

In the east of the country, Jean-Pierre Masseret, the PS candidate who came third with 15.5% of the vote, compared with 25.3% for the centre-right candidate and 37.6% for the FN, has refused to bow out of the second round.

Despite the FN surge, a second round on 13 December will be the decider. Former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of Marine, reached the 2002 presidential run-off, which he then lost badly.

“We do not own the voices of our voters”, Sarkozy’s former foreign minister Alain Juppe said after the Republicans issued a statement ruling out alliances with the Socialists which they said “would give the French the feeling that we are confiscating the election by striking tactical deals behind their backs”.