Small towns prepare to vote for the National Front man who isn't there

Georges Moreau is an invisible man. His face appears on National Front campaign posters in the Clermont constituency in the Oise, 50 miles north of Paris. Otherwise, few people in the area have seen him or know anything about him.

"Moreau? Never heard of him," said Daniel Martin, 50, selling melons in the market in the small town of Lianville. "He doesn't come from around here. The other candidates have come to the market to shake hands with people, but I've never seen him."

One person who has seen Mr Moreau is the local reporter for Le Courrier Picard, Gautier Lecardonnel. "He gave a press conference but said nothing. All the questions were answered by someone from the regional office of the party," he said.

The Independent on Sunday left several messages for Mr Moreau at NF headquarters in Saint-Cloud, near Paris, and at the regional office of Picardy. He did not call back. The most that we could establish is that Mr Moreau is a young and junior official in the party machine.

In other words, Mr Moreau is an anonymous and idle candidate for a party which claims to fight for the grass-roots concerns of "real" people. He has no chance, right? Er, not exactly. He will comfortably top the poll in the Clermont constituency in the first round of the parliamentary elections today.

He may score only 18 or 19 per cent, compared to Jean-Marie Le Pen's 25 per cent here in the presidential election in April. But the rest of the vote will scatter over 14 other candidates, including three rivals from the mainstream left and three from the centre-right.

Dozens of similarly unknown, and mysteriously shy and inactive, candidates for Mr Le Pen's party will top their local polls in many parts of France today. It is even possible that the NF will lead in more constituencies than any other single party, certainly more than ever before.

That would be a disturbing event, but it would not be a reason for undue panic. In the second round of the election, a week today, the National Front will be defeated in almost every one of those constituencies – including Clermont – by a candidate of either the left or President Jacques Chirac's centre-right.

In other words, seven weeks after the French presidential election, history may be about to repeat itself. There will be a strong-seeming performance by the far right in the first round, magnified by a scattering of the vote for the mainstream parties.

In the second round, the mainstream will reassume command. The polls suggest that there will be a comfortable victory for Mr Chirac's centre-right. The electoral system is so perverse and the mood of the electorate so volatile that the possibility of a victory for the left (and therefore another enforced power-sharing between Mr Chirac and a left-wing prime minister) should not be completely excluded. The opinion polls in the last few days have picked up a modest leftward trend in the electorate.

But what does it all mean? Is the far right a growing threat in France, or not? Why does the self-proclaimed party of the real people choose candidates who prefer to avoid the people?

The Clermont constituency is a collection of small industrial towns and commuter villages at the very northern limit of the Paris conurbation. It has no particular problem with crime or immigrants (although there are more troubled areas just to the south). Some small factories have closed, but the local economy is relatively flourishing. Its future is tied to its excellent position close to the main route from Paris to Britain and the Benelux (in other words to the European Union, which the NF abhors).

Why should there be such a strong far-right vote in such a place? Edouard Courtial, 29, is the official candidate of President Chirac's new party, the Union pour la Majorité Présidentielle (UMP), which was bolted together last month. Although a local man, his selection caused some dissension among the ever-quarrelling factions of the centre-right. Two rival candidates also claim to be part of Mr Chirac's camp.

Mr Courtial, a business consultant, says that the NF vote in Clermont is not a racist vote and not an anti-European vote. It comes from a fear that crime will spread from the "quartiers difficiles", in the Paris suburbs a little to the south.

"It also comes from a feeling that mainstream politics has done nothing for them and is not interested in them. That's why I'm trying to run a different kind of campaign, with a lot of contact, a lot of door-to-door visits." Mr Courtial admits to being "frustrated, even angry" that the National Front claims to be the party closest to the people and does not bother to campaign.

The same pattern is found all over France. The split in the French far right three years ago has left the NF desperately short of presentable candidates. People vote NF anyway, as a vote for Mr Le Pen (who is not running). Depending how you look at it, this is either disturbing or encouraging. Mr Le Pen will be 74 this month; he will be 79 at the next French election, and there is nobody, inside the NF or outside, capable of replacing him.

The official Socialist party candidate in Clermont, Gerard Wéyn, 59, will probably be Mr Courtial's main rival to win the seat. But, he, like Mr Courtial, is not absolutely sure of reaching the second round. The outgoing Socialist MP, Jean-Pierre Braine, de-selected for reasons of age and health, is also standing. So is a green candidate, splitting the moderate left vote three ways.

Mr Wéyn, a retired teacher, is not so sure that the National Front vote is simply a protest phenomenon, which will fade with Mr Le Pen's advancing age.

"More and more people are ready to admit they vote for Le Pen," he said. "And, in this constituency anyway, the strongholds are not in the working-class areas, but in the wealthier, commutor villages.

"It's complex. But in the end you have to say it is largely a racial thing. There is some racism in all of us. Most people fight it intellectually.

"The way crime is being exaggerated for electoral reasons has given many people an excuse to stop fighting their racism."