A caller to a French radio station on Monday morning said he supported Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. However, he added, he wouldn’t vote for them in an election. Why? asked the host. The man said he feared that if the National Rally came to power the far-left would turn France ‘into a real mess’.

I have heard similar anxiety other middle-class French people who are tempted to vote for Le Pen’s party. They may not agree with her economic policies but they do share her concerns about mass immigration and insecurity.

But what frightens them most is the far-left, which as a history of violence going back to 1789. In 2023 the constitutional historian Christophe Boutin explained that violent disorder ‘is in the DNA of a certain French left’. He blamed ‘the myth of the Revolution… and a Marxi

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