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French press review 23 April 2012

There are no real surprises on the front pages of this morning's Paris newspapers. After the first round of the French presidential election, Socialist contender François Hollande is slightly ahead of outgoing president Nicolas Sarkozy, with Marine Le Pen of the National Front finishing in third place.

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Le Pen is credited with slightly more than 18%, better than her father's score in 2002, and that got him into the second round at the expense of the then Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin.

What is surprising is how little reaction there is in the French press this morning to the remarkable performance of the far right National Front. Something like 7 million people voted for Marine Le Pen, a situation which Green candidate Eva Joly last night described as "an indelible stain" on the French political landscape.

Business daily Les Echos describes the National Front's score as an "earthquake". The editorial in left-leaning Libération describes the far right's performance as "worrying, if not worse".

But right wing Le Figaro chooses to see Le Pen's irresistible rise as a simple reflection of the financial crisis, without any social component.

Le Pen has, of course, done an excellent job of changing the image of her National Front party from that of a bunch of dangerous, xenophobic skinheads, to that of a populist movement determined to put France and the French first.

But the fact remains that National Front policy on, for example, immigration and security, remains solidly based on the exclusion of the other.

For Marine Le Pen, France for the French means more immigrants taken to the border and expelled; improving security means more immigrants taken to the border and expelled; creating employment for real French people means more immigrants taken to the border and expelled.

And the National Front don't like the euro either. Take it to the border!

Sarkozy now has to find a way of convincing Le Pen supporters that he represents the best solution to their problems. Which probably means an intensification of an already draconian immigration policy by the mainstream UMP.

It also means that Marine Le Pen and her colleagues are well placed facing into this summer's legislative elections.

They will be able to negotiate constituency-sharing deals with the struggling UMP which could see them improve on the 35 seats the National Front won in the parliament of 1986.

Sarkozy will also have to attract a substantial number of those who voted yesterday for the centrist, François Bayrou. Finding some way of attracting the extreme right and the centre will be a good trick if he can manage it.

We've talked a lot, in recent weeks, about opinion polls. Le Monde reveals that no fewer than 375 such polls were published in the course of the first round, they expect at least 25 more before the whole bun fight is over. That provisional total of 400 compares to just 193 for the entire election ten years ago in 2002.

They got it terribly wrong then, failing to see that Jean-Marie Le Pen was waiting to ambush a disorganised and divided left. The pollsters did broadly better this time, despite a few glitches.

The gap between Holande and Sarkozy turned out to be less than predicted. Le Pen did better. Mélenchon did worse. Bayrou got roughly what the most recent polls said he would.

The same pollsters are already back in action, with five new surveys predicting a narrow victory for François Hollande in the second round, in two weeks' time.

What I want to know is . . . what became of Luc Belançon? Many of us would never have been aware of Belançon's existence were it not for the fine editorial eye of those who run the Iranian daily, Tehran Emrooz.

The paper is produced by the mayor of Tehran and is so close to the Supreme Guide, Ali Khameni, that it can be counted on to give the proper revolutionary line. That's true of all Iranian media, of course, but let's not argue over details.

Iran has not shown a great deal of interest in the French presidential election, according to Le Monde, but Friday's edition of Tehran Emrooz did reveal the extraordinary truth about Luc Belançon, a left wing candidate set up by none other than Nicolas Sarkozy, with the aim of reducing support for the main left wing contender, François Hollande.

The editorial in which the Belançon plot is revealed also, with admirable consistency, describes the entire French election as a "farce".

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