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France's far-right
National Front is attracting more defectors from Hollande's Socialist
party | THOMAS SAMSON/AFP/Getty Images
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Le
Pen’s new army of defectors
A
Socialist is the latest trophy for the National Front, which claims a
‘flood’ of recruits.
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
10/20/15, 8:00 PM CET
PARIS — Guy
Deballe is not your typical National Front activist. A Parisian
executive at a top-tier technology company, he spent much of his life
defending left-wing values as a mid-ranking activist in President
François Hollande’s ruling Socialist party.
But six months ago,
Deballe did something that would make many Socialists cry treason. He
wrote an email to the Paris section of the far-right National Front,
the long-time nemesis of his own party, to ask if he could join its
ranks.
The National Front
was only too happy to oblige. Deballe represents the rarest kind of
political trophy for FN leader Marine Le Pen, who wants to recruit as
many defectors from her rivals’ camps as possible: a left-winger
who can throw discredit on Hollande’s team, having seen its inner
workings for a decade.
“Of course, I
needed to settle a few issues with my conscience before making the
jump,” said Deballe, who went public about joining the FN for the
first time in an interview with POLITICO and news magazine Le Point.
“When you think about the FN, there’s a lot of baggage that comes
with that… But today, I think the Socialist party is imploding and
the party best positioned to address France’s issues is the
National Front.”
“We
want young, ambitious people who want to work” — Sébastien
Chenu, FN.
While Deballe’s
defection is remarkable for his Socialist links, he is just one in a
growing list of officials from rival parties, mainly Nicolas
Sarkozy’s center-right Les Républicains (LR), to have jumped ship
and joined the National Front.
Over the past year,
Le Pen has poached three mid-ranking LR officials (Sébastien Chenu,
ex-leader of a gay section in the LR; Franck Allisio, former head of
its “Jeunes Actifs” section for young professionals; Olivier
Bettati, former deputy to Nice mayor Christian Estrosi); a trio of LR
municipal officials from the Gard region; and the head of the
centrist UDI party in the southern Vaucluse region, Catherine
Paiocchi. Aurelien Legrand, right-hand man to FN treasurer Wallerand
de Saint Just, was a founding member of the NPA, a fringe
anti-capitalist party.
Those are just the
most visible recruits. The FN claims several more defectors prefer to
remain under the radar, while others have been rejected for various
reasons.
“Every few days I
get a call from someone who asks: Is there a spot for me on one of
your [electoral] lists?” said Sébastien Chenu, who joined the FN
last September. “We don’t want those people. We want young,
ambitious people who want to work.”
‘Second-rate
recruits’
For Le Pen, who
wants to be French president in 2017, the incentive to go after rival
officials is clear.
Each widely
publicized defection is a vote of confidence for her party, proof of
its attractiveness and growth potential. Each convert is also
well-armed to attack one of the dominant mainstream parties, which
she must defeat in order to win the presidential election.
What’s harder to
gauge is the true significance of the phenomenon. Chenu, who is a
point of contact for many LR officials, said politicians are
defecting at a rate of about “one per day,” although there is no
official count because the recruitment process is not centralized,
and the party communicates only about major defections.
Meanwhile, at both
Les Républicains and the Socialist party, recruitment rates are down
over the past year.
But Joël Gombin, a
political scientist who studies the National Front, said the party is
exaggerating its success rate in attracting defectors. At most the
trend concerns “a few dozen” officials, he said, many of them
“second-rate” politicians who hope to get a fresh start with the
FN.
“The National
Front wants to show it can draw people from outside its own camp, so
the more remote the recruit in political terms, the higher their
value,” said Gombin. “In reality, these are individual cases,
often people who feel they have been failed by their party, or who
are in trouble, and want to earn a meal ticket.”
A senior LR official
and former member of Sarkozy’s government, who declined to be
named, said the FN was overstating the number of recruits it has
managed to woo. He also criticized Allisio and Chenu, saying that
both had defected shortly after being disappointed by a failure to be
included on electoral lists, or given jobs.
However, he
acknowledged that the FN was able to attract recruits due to greater
opportunities for young people.
“The National
Front is easier for young people, because there is no one defending a
position, and no big names,” the official said.
Christophe Borgel, a
Socialist MP, rejected the idea his party was losing many members.
“It’s nonsense,” he said.
The recruits tend to
portray themselves as pioneers, a first wave to be followed by many
more defections.
In interviews with
POLITICO, three of them – Chenu, Allisio and Deballe – all said
they expected more recruits to follow in their footsteps, as others
experienced the same disaffection and disagreement with their current
parties.
Independent means
Allisio, who spent
12 years in Sarkozy’s party, said he lost faith when the Right was
in power.
As staff assistant
to former European affairs secretary Pierre Lellouche, he felt
betrayed by what he deemed repeated concessions to Germany, for which
he blamed then-president Sarkozy.
Allisio said he grew
increasingly frustrated over the years by a party that offered little
hope for career mobility for most young officials. A first contact
with a National Front official, followed by a two-hour lunch with
Marion-Maréchal Le Pen in July, helped to make up his mind to leave.
“If [the National
Front] had the same resources as the other parties, 30 percent of Les
Républicains would slide over to the FN,” he said. “There are
thousands of activists, of collaborators to elected officials, who
want to do what I’ve done but cannot because they’re held back by
a salary, or a mandate, or both.”
Deballe, who ran for
election in Paris’ 20th district on a Socialist ticket in 2014,
said he got sick of the party’s cumbersome internal decision-making
process, centered on debates and consensus-making. He especially
resented the way activists had to approve “motions,” or standard
policy platforms, every year, and were treated as traitors if they
changed opinions.
Most of all, he
said, he found many of activists cynical and disillusioned.
Polls
show the Front winning in at least two of mainland France’s 13
regions, which would give them control over budgets exceeding €2
billion.
“Ninety percent of
the people I met were not there to defend certain ideas, but because
they wanted to further their careers,” said Deballe. “They had
nothing else going on but the party, so they were going to stay no
matter what.”
While other
potential recruits are tied to parties and elected officials by a
salary, Deballe, Allisio and Chenu all said they were able to leave
because they had alternate sources of revenue: communications firms
for the latter two, an executive’s position in a blue-chip French
company he declined to name for the former.
For Gombin, the
National Front’s ability to recruit has everything to do with its
ability to offer paid positions.
“You can expect
recruitments to increase in line with the resources they get, and not
just recruitments of activists but also of high-level functionaries,”
said Gombin. “But this is nothing new: In the years after ’84 and
’86 [when the National Front won 36 seats in the National Assembly
thanks to proportional representation in parliament, since revoked],
there were plenty of defections.”
The FN’s resources
could increase markedly if the party performs well in the December
regional elections. Polls show the Front winning in at least two of
mainland France’s 13 regions, which would give them control over
budgets exceeding €2 billion.
While Deballe,
Allisio and Chenu all said they had joined the party expecting
nothing, all are either confirmed or possible candidates in December.
If they win, there is the promise of a new career. But if they lose,
there is no turning back to their old parties.
“There’s no
party that is as painful to join as the National Front,” said
Aurelien Legrand. “It’s the only one.”
Authors:
Nicholas Vinocur
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