There was a lot of talk last night that France’s [insert political label of choice] National Front (FN) had been ‘routed’ in the second round of local elections. To be sure, it’s true that in the first round, the FN came top in six of the thirteen regions that were being contested, but failed to win a single region in the second, but by securing 6.8 million votes (a record) its percentage of the vote held up at around 28 percent (up from 9 percent in 2010’s second round) despite a higher turnout (something that won’t have helped the FN). Essentially the FN was squeezed out by tactical voting by supporters of the establishment parties of center-left and center-right (in a couple of FN-friendly regions, the Socialists actually withdrew from the contest). France is a democracy and those voters and that party were fully entitled to do that—there was nothing underhand about the maneuver. At the same time, if there was anything that could reinforce the sense of exclusion that so many FN voters feel, this was surely it. Their outsider ‘narrative’ will have been well and truly refreshed. Moreover, the FN will be spared the scrutiny and the compromises that taking actual power involves, often a painful experience for populist parties – as the Finns Party has discovered far to France’s north.

On the other hand the FN will be well-positioned to build up its local infrastructure further. The Local:

[Marine Le Pen] pointed out that her party would be the main opposition party on most regional councils after tripling the number of seats they had picked up in 2010.

Meanwhile, The Guardian adds:

Even if the FN has failed to win overall control of a region – just as it had failed to win overall control of any smaller local départements earlier this year – its broad trajectory is on the up. A BVA poll during the campaign found that 57% of French people now feel the FN should be considered as a party like any other. Its voters can no longer be confined to a particular stereotype.
It is true that it tends broadly to score higher among younger people or those with lower levels of education, that its reach has grown in areas of inequality, and that the further away a person lives from a railway station the more chance they have of voting FN. But it has also expanded its reach to public sector workers, more employees in private companies and is reaching every strata in society from Alpine villages to suburban towns.Crucially, France faces a presidential election in less than 18 months. The FN leader Marine Le Pen is predicted to easily make it to the second-round presidential run-off by knocking out one of her mainstream rivals. When her father Jean-Marie Le Pen did just this in 2002, it came as a thunderbolt of shock. He was squarely beaten when 82% of voters from all parties opted for Jacques Chirac to keep Le Pen bay. Fifteen years later, if Marine Le Pen makes the second round, it will not be a shock and she is likely to seriously narrow the gap. The parliamentary elections that follow could be painful and difficult for the mainstream right and left.

They know that, and I suspect that the result will be to move the center of debate—the Overton Window—more the FN’s way.

Over at CapX, Walter Ellis ventures a prediction (my emphasis added):

We have learned that the French working class and its allies are perfectly capable of moving from the syndicalist Left to the populist Right in one easy move. Just as former Communists in Germany in the 1930s abandoned the far-Left to embrace Fascism, so millions of French workers in 2015 have shown that they would vote for the Devil himself if he promised them safe streets, jobs and a restoration of national sovereignty. Finally, we have learned that the result of the 2017 presidential elections is already assured. Sarkozy, the failed “king of bling” will be restored to the Elysée after a hard-fought campaign in which Marine Le Pen will push him all the way, with Hollande, or his successor, an irrelevance.
The only way in which the Left could hope to win would be to do what they have so far signally failed to do: defeat the terrorists, repair the economy and sign up to meaningful reform of the EU. Valls – a highly capable and sensible politician – knows what needs to be done, but he is rather like the owner of a new restaurant who devises a mouth-watering menu only to realise that he doesn’t have a chef and has no idea how to put his promised food on the table.
It is an unappetising prospect. The simple fact of the matter is that the French, no matter who they voted for yesterday or last week, want action, not words. Le Pen would certainly have given them that, but at a cost the majority are are not, for the moment, prepared to pay. What they expect now is that the Socialists see out their mandate as best they can, with particular emphasis on the Islamist threat to national security, and that they then leave the stage to those with a plan and a determination to introduce change.
The cruel irony is that the Man With a Plan is Nicolas Sakozy, who, like Hollande, did little or nothing as President to reform the economy or take on the unions, and who – again like Hollande – became better known for his romantic liaisons than for his mastery of statecraft. If Hollande is Monsieur Baggy Pants, Sarkozy is all mouth and no trousers. Has he changed? Probably not. Will he take an axe to the economy? Probably not? Will he do anything to improve the lot of France’s restive Muslim minority, whom he once referred to as a rabble (racaille)? It seems unlikely. He knows too well that the French will give up anything for change provided only that everything remains the same.

In another words, a reverse Gattapardo (sort of).

Writing for the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman casts the defeat of the FN as another chapter in “the contest between nationalists and internationalists” he sees as “playing out all over the world”.

That’s not quite right. At least within the EU, the real contest is between nationalists and internationalists on one side, and supranationalists on the other. That’s something very different.

And it makes all the difference.