The Failing UMP

Back to the cantonal elections for just a moment, Ivan Rioufol, a journalist for Le Figaro, predicts that the UMP party will lose in the presidential elections. His article begins with a review of the election results and a reminder that the Front National won 40% of the votes in the 403 cantons where they had a candidate. After the election the general secretary of the UMP, Jean-François Copé, stated: "the message has been received":

In truth, I doubt that the message from the voting booths has really been received, even if Copé recognized "the concern of the French people" and cited offshoring and migration issues. While he was speaking on RTL television, the government spokesman, François Baroin, was speaking on France-Info assuring everyone that "it was necessary to put an end to all these debates, such as the debate on laïcité and Islam," and calling on the UMP to return to "profoundly republican" values and to "concentrate on unemployment and deficits". A similar position was held by Dominique de Villepin, speaking on Canal +, urging the UMP not to "poach" on territory held by the Front National. "We must return to those issues that preoccupy the French people: housing, employment, purchasing power…" The Socialist Party says much the same thing, when it insists that the crisis is only economic and social. But this diagnosis is, from all the evidence, incomplete by a wide margin. Has the UMP decided to abandon the reality of the Front National?

It is this conformist thinking and political cowardice, which the UMP tries to hide, that will bring about its downfall in 2012. The truth is that the feeling of injustice and abandonment felt by the people is not just the result of a loss of purchasing power. The polls show that massive immigration and the Muslim separatism that results from it are topics as preoccupying as the pauperization of the middle class. Middle class Frenchmen cannot comprehend that a country deeply in debt, unable to provide jobs or housing or protection for its own citizens, persists in opening its doors legally to so many people, with no concern for integration, contrary to what Eric Besson maintained this morning on Europe 1: "Those who believe in integration must defend legal immigration and fight illegal immigration," he said. But, legal immigrants are as numerous in the ghettos as illegals.

The UMP will be swept away if it continues to refuse to understand the people. And it will get what it asked for.

Note: A reminder that Eric Besson was the Minister of Immigration during last year's debate on National Identity. He became infamous for saying:

"France is neither a people, nor a language, nor a territory, nor a religion, it is a conglomerate of peoples who want to live together. There is no ethnic Frenchman, there is only an ethnically mixed France."

Those interested can review the event here.

Below, Jean-François Copé speaking in Marseilles.