Not a cry for Le Pen but a vote against the Left

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There is no one in British national politics quite like Jean- Marie Le Pen, president of France's Far Right Front National. To understand why he is so hated in France one has to remember the pro- Nazi French prime minister Pierre Laval, the memories of the concentration camps and the deportation of the French Jews and the complicated emotions arising from France's defeat in the colonial wars in Indo-China and Algeria. Le Pen, at 73, is a figure straight out of the worst episodes in France's recent history. He is also a demagogue, a bully and an inspired provocateur. He is an anti-St Francis. Whenever he makes a speech, he sows disharmony and mutual loathing among the French.

As a young man, Le Pen had a violent record. He lost his right eye after brawling in the street with a member of the French Communist party. He has justified the use of torture during the Algerian war and has been accused of, and has denied, using torture himself as a paratrooper with the French army during the Battle of Algiers.

Le Pen is a romantic who thinks that all the bad, old battles that were lost years ago should be fought again. He is also a self-made millionaire whose original mailorder business specialised in selling tapes of Nazi marching songs. This is the man who will now replace the Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin in the second round of the presidential election on 5 May.

His ragbag political programme gives some idea of his pungent populist appeal. Apart from re-introducing the death penalty, Le Pen wants to ban the construction of any more mosques on French territory, re-introduce police controls at French frontiers, adopt zero-tolerance policing, increase stop-and- search powers throughout the country, and reverse the law so that wouldbe immigrants who had relatives living abroad would be promptly deported. He would protect the French domestic market by imposing a tariff barrier, and his social policy is to criminalise abortion, encourage test tube conceptions, introduce education vouchers and pay housewives a state wage. How he would pay for his reforms is a mystery since he also intends to abolish income tax, wealth tax, death duties and the tax on small savings.

But this political programme is almost irrelevant since Le Pen is most unlikely to be elected as president. His real importance lies in his voters, the five million men and women who were enough to give him his triumph in yesterday's historically-low poll. As many as 25 per cent of French voters are thought to have voted for Le Pen at least once. They do so out of desperation, not waving but drowning because they cannot catch the attention of the mainstream politicians.

The single issue that has dominated the campaign so far has been law and order, which in the minds of many is linked with immigration. Le Pen is not just a violent populist, he is also a shrewd political tactician. Long before anyone else he realised he was going to win yesterday. Today his campaign funds and his giant marquees are already in place ready for the second round, and he will fight Jacques Chirac on the issue of Europe and national identity under the slogan "the People against the System".

Anyone looking for a model of the France that voted for Le Pen should visit the little community of Sangatte, just outside Calais. Famous in Britain as the site of the refugee camp that is the jumping-off point for the Channel Tunnel, it is a lot less famous in government circles in Paris. The mayor of Sangatte has warned the authorities for months of the dangers of his electors backing the Front National if the camp was not closed. But the people who take the decisions in France do not have to live with the consequences of their policies. Unlike the voters of Sangatte, they do not have to keep their children inside the house and off the beach through fear of the violent gangsters who now run the camp. They do not have to clean up the gardens that have become refuse dumps, or pay for their smashed-up cars to be repaired or find that no one wants to buy their houses. Last week a refugee was stabbed to death in the street, another victim of the camp's gang warfare.

Elisabeth Guigou, the intelligent, glamorous and incompetent minister responsible for keeping the Sangatte camp open is now out of a job, though judging by the initial response of the Socialist classe politique on French television last night, she has little idea of what hit her. According to the Socialists who were interviewed last night, Jospin lost and Le Pen won because the pollsters got it wrong, or because the journalists gave Le Pen too much attention, or because Jacques Chirac devoted too much time to law and order and so legitimised the Front National.

As they floundered on, trying not to work out what had happened, these clever, highly-qualified people gave the impression that if they kept talking, it would all go away, the issues, the result, even the voters, and they could get back to governing the country.

In fact it was not just the Socialist who lost yesterday. The two candidates of the Far Right won nearly 20 per cent of the vote. The three candidates of the Far Left won less than 12 per cent. The truth is that the Left was flattened because the Socialist government's policies have been deeply unpopular.

For many French people France is not just "an idea" or "a vocation", to use Jacques Chirac's words of last night. It is a country within a border, a family of regions with a wealth of local traditions, a place apart with its own history and language. That is what Le Pen's voters care about and what they want their political leaders to defend. It is an awkward message for the Eurocrats to take on board, but if they fail to do so, the Front National will go from strength to strength.