Vivat Rex Carolus!
The UK’s racial nationalist movement – battered and bruised after a grim set of election results this week – will have had mixed feelings about today’s Coronation of King Charles III.
Amid the inevitable wokeness, welcome elements of British tradition remained visible and audible throughout the event.
The spirit of the United Kingdom, the heritage of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, is still alive.
And the same is true of racial nationalism in these dark times.
It will very soon be time for our movement to face some hard truths. This website and forthcoming issues of our magazine will not shy away from expressing these truths in strong terms, even at the risk of offending some readers.
But for today, we wish our new King well, and hope that he and his fellow Britons can interpret the Archbishop’s words at the Enthronement in terms that ensure loyalty to the Union, Race and Nation.
Stand firm, and hold fast from henceforth this seat of royal dignity, which is yours by the authority of Almighty God.
May that same God, whose throne endures for ever, establish your throne in righteousness, that it may stand fast for evermore.
H&D Issue 114 out now
The new issue (#114) of Heritage and Destiny magazine is out now. The 32-page, May-June 2023 issue, has as its lead:
“Racial Replacement in New York City” – Jack Antonio on Brooklyn past and present
Issue 114
May – June 2023
Contents include:
- Editorial – by Mark Cotterill
- There Goes the Neighborhood! A cautionary tale of White replacement by Jack Antonio
- Tolkien, Fantasy and ‘the right’ – by Armand Berger
- Energy crisis: There is a way out! – by Dr Gunther Kümel
- Book Review – The Enemy of Europe: Then And Now – by Francis Parker Yockey, edited by Greg Johnson – reviewed by James Knight
- As the SNP elect a new ‘Scottish’ leader, their Independence hopes fade – by Peter Rushton
- Right to Reply – Reflections on “Nationalism, the movement and the Royal Family” – by William Mitchell
- Was Roald Dahl’s “anti-semitism” based on experience? – by Peter Rushton
- Movie Review: Hostile Territory – reviewed by Mark Cotterill
- Sunak’s betrayal of Ulster – by Peter Rushton
- Book Review – The Tyranny of Human Rights: From Jacobinism to the United Nations – by Dr. Kerry Bolton – Part 2 of a review by Ian Freeman
- Transcending the Tribe – Isabel Peralta on community as the root of social nationalism
- A New Strategy for Securing the Realm? – by Dr James B. Thring
- From the Other Side of the Pond – by Kenneth Schmidt
- Two full pages of readers’ letters.
- Movement News – Latest analysis of the nationalist movement – by Peter Rushton.
If you would like a sample copy, please send £5.00 / $10.00 or for a year’s (six issues) subscription, send £35.00 (UK) – £45.00 / €55 (Europe) – £50 / $100 (Australia and New Zealand) – $60.00 (USA) – $70.00 Canada) – £50.00/$100.00 (Rest of World).
Local Elections 2023
for updated list of this year’s nationalist results, click here
England’s last racial nationalist councillor – Julian Leppert in Waltham Abbey Paternoster ward, Epping Forest – was defeated in Thursday’s elections. Julian polled 187 votes (25.2%), which is likely to be the best nationalist election result this year, but lost his seat to a Conservative candidate.
This year Julian was standing as a British Democrat, having been elected four years ago for the now-defunct For Britain Movement (and having been a BNP councillor a decade ago).
Most of England held local elections on 4th May – a first chance for voters to give a verdict on the latest reinvention of the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. These elections were also a final chance for Reform UK, the civic nationalist party that grew out of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party but has so far failed to make any serious impact.
For H&D readers, one of the most interesting results was in Walkden North ward, Salford, where Ashlea Simon of Britain First polled 405 votes (18.2%).
This was down from 508 votes (21.6%) last year, but realistically it was another good result for Ms Simon and her party, given that this year they faced opposition from Reform UK, who finished bottom of the poll with only 68 votes (3.0%).
Britain First focused a great deal of effort on this Salford campaign, and the result contrasted with nearby Broadheath ward, Trafford, where their candidate Donald Southworth polled 153 votes (3.6%). Paul Harding managed 214 votes (13.1%) in Hockley & Ashingdon ward, Rochford; Nick Lambert 108 votes (12.6%) in Ballard ward, New Forest; and Nick Scanlon 61 votes (10.2%) in Darenth ward, Dartford. The Britain First candidates in Bideford South ward, Torridge, polled 15%, benefiting from the fact that the Tories did not contest the ward. Ironically the second-worst Britain First result was for their leader Paul Golding, who polled 6.9% in Swanscombe ward, Dartford.
Former BNP councillor Graham Partner achieved another of the best nationalist results overnight, with 94 votes (15.9%) as independent candidate for Hermitage ward, NW Leicestershire. Another nationalist standing without a party label was David Hyden, backed by activists from the new Homeland Party: he polled 81 votes (5.7%) in Cannock South ward, Cannock Chase.
The National Front’s sole candidate this year was Tim Knowles, who polled 40 votes (1.8%) in Codnor, Langley Mill & Aldercar, Amber Valley.
One of England’s newest (civic) nationalist parties – the National Housing Party UK – had three candidates this year. Callum Leat polled 228 votes (10.3%) in Dodington ward, South Gloucestershire. Former BNP and For Britain Movement activist Gary Bergin polled 149 votes (4.1%) in Claughton ward, Wirral. And NHPUK leader John Lawrence polled 205 votes (7.6%) in Hollinwood ward, Oldham.
Dr Andrew Emerson, a former BNP candidate who has for some years been the sole candidate of his own small party Patria, polled 6.4% in Chichester East ward, Chichester.
The first British Democrat results overnight were in Essex. In Kursaal ward, Southend, former East London BNP activist Steve Smith polled 42 votes (2.6%), finishing narrowly ahead of a candidate from the Heritage Party (a civic nationalist splinter from UKIP) who polled 2.1%. Mr Smith’s Brit Dem colleague Chris Bateman fared slightly better in Laindon Park ward, Basildon, with 89 votes (4.2%).
The British Democrats had better news during today’s counts, with Julian Leppert’s 25.2% (see above) being easily the best nationalist result this year, though David Haslett faced a tough campaign in the multiracial Saffron ward, Leicester, and polled 34 votes (1.9%). In Wyke ward, Bradford, Brit Dem leader Dr Jim Lewthwaite polled 140 votes (5.1%), finishing five votes ahead of a Reform UK opponent.
Some very poor overnight results for Reform UK indicated that they have very little genuine local activism, despite high profile backing at national level from the likes of Nigel Farage and GB News. (Speaking of GB News, one of their political commentators Sophie Corcoran was heavily defeated as Tory candidate for Chadwell St Mary ward, Thurrock.)
Even in Lichfield, where former Tory mayor Barry Gwilt defected to Reform UK earlier this year, neither Mr Gwilt nor any other Reform UK candidate stood for election this week.
The only good news for Reform UK so far has been in by far their best branch – Derby – where they retained six seats across their two wards, Alvaston North and Alvaston South.
One of the very few really active Reform UK branches is in Bolton, where they had 34 candidates, but none were elected. (Their strongest Bolton vote was 17% in Farnworth North.)
Even in areas such as Lincolnshire’s South Kesteven council (which includes Margaret Thatcher’s birthplace Grantham), where Sunak’s Conservatives lost many votes and seats, the ‘protest vote’ went to independents rather than to Reform UK or any of the UKIP splinter parties (two of which have already closed down). It seems that the Farage era is very definitely over.
Further confirmation of this came from Boston, another Lincolnshire council, which was one of the main UKIP and Brexit Party target areas of the past decade. UKIP lost their last remaining Boston council seat yesterday. Reform UK contested just one Boston ward, where they finished with only 4%, behind an English Democrat candidate on 7%.
English Democrat leader Robin Tilbrook polled 10.3% in Shelley ward, Epping Forest. Nationwide the EDs had five candidates, including Steve and Val Morris in Bury who polled 6.1% and 2.9% respectively.
Election counts continued this afternoon. H&D will have full reports and analysis on results as they arrive throughout the day.
(There were no elections this week in Scotland or Wales. Northern Ireland’s local elections are on 18th May.)
Ireland set to adopt new ‘hate crime’ law
The Republic of Ireland’s parliament is about to pass a new law on ‘hate crime’ that will be among the most restrictive in Europe.
This will bring Ireland broadly into line with most European Union countries that already restrict historical investigation of aspects of the Second World War, notably the alleged mass murder of six million Jews in purported homicidal ‘gas chambers’.
Section 8 of the new law describes historical revisionism in similar terms to those used in many other debate-denying European laws that have been strengthened since the 1980s: “condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace”.
Offences under this section will be punished by up to one year in prison. Moreover even possession of revisionist material will be criminalised under Section 10: courts will assume that an offender intended this material for distribution, and the burden of proof will be on a defendant to show otherwise.
The maximum sentence for such “possession” (which could be in printed or electronic format) will be two years imprisonment. There will be potential exemptions, including for material that can be shown to be of scholarly importance, but as elsewhere in Europe courts are likely to impose historical judgments that should normally be outside their competence.
In a direct attack on conservative Catholic traditions that were once the backbone of Irish society, the new law targets not only the usual categories of racial ‘hate crime’, but also offences against new, fashionable ‘protected characteristics’ involving gender and sexual orientation.
In short, it will be a ‘hate crime’ for anyone to fail to agree that a man who asserts he is a woman, has actually become a woman.
Almost all parties in the Dail, Dublin’s parliament, are supporting this Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill. In Northern Ireland, only Traditional Unionist Voice has so far spoken out against the new law.
At H&D, we are unsurprised to see Irish politics going down this route. It has long been obvious that despite the persistent delusions of many Irish-Americans, Sinn Fein is fully on board with a toxic mix of Marxism and post-1968 leftist liberalism.
Dublin is increasingly multiracial, and its political culture is almost entirely ‘woke’.
Added to these toxic trends is a more fundamental problem. More than any other country in the world (except Israel), the Irish Republic is founded on a set of historical lies and distortions, reflected even in the absurdity of fake ‘Irish’ titles for Prime Minister (Taoiseach), Parliament (Dail) and many other party names and official positions.
Having forged their own identity on the basis of ‘victim’ imposture, Irish republicans now find themselves obliged to surrender to those who deploy stronger ‘victim cards’.
Reclaiming May Day for European workers!
May Day was a traditional European festival long before it was hijacked by American Marxists in 1889.
Linked to the ancient celebration of Beltane (marking the midpoint between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice), May Day is marked in Germany by Walpurgis Night and in England by traditional dances.
One of the most colourful celebrations of Beltane is in Edinburgh, which for H&D readers had a special significance this year because our comrade Vincent Reynouard has been in Edinburgh prison for more than five months. (An interview with Vincent will appear soon on this website and in the July-August edition of H&D.)
Racial nationalists have rightly begun to reclaim May Day as a European festival, and to assert the reality that we are the true champions of European workers.
The so-called ‘left’ has long since surrendered to the demands of global capitalism. Mass immigration is championed both in the name of ‘wokeness’ and to provide cheap labour, directly undermining the wages and working conditions of Europeans.
Meanwhile the so-called ‘right’ sometimes talks about resisting mass immigration, but in reality its reactionary ideology is in many ways worse than the ‘left’, and is even more devoted to the exploitative values of global capitalism: anti-nature, anti-worker, anti-White, anti-European.
On May Day 2023 H&D‘s comrades around the world asserted the eternal values of racial nationalism – the true interests of European workers.
Falangist leader exhumed from Madrid war memorial
On the 120th anniversary of his birth, the remains of Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera are today being removed from his tomb at the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caídos), a vast memorial to the dead of Spain’s Civil War. H&D‘s Isabel Peralta reported today from the scene of José Antonio’s reburial in Madrid (see video below).
José Antonio founded the Falange Española in 1933 in an effort to transcend petty factionalism and offer Spaniards a non-Marxist critique of capitalism:
“The National-Syndicalist State will not stand cruelly aloof from economic conflicts between men, nor will it look on impassively as the strongest class subjugates the weakest. Our regime will make class struggle totally impossible, since all those cooperating in production will constitute an organic whole therein. We deplore and shall prevent at all costs the abuses of partial vested interests, as well as anarchy in the workforce.”
In November 1936, aged 33, José Antonio was murdered by leftist assassins in the prison yard at Alicante. After the nationalist victory in 1939 his Falangist followers carried José Antonio’s remains 300km to the Escorial near Madrid, and in 1959 he was reburied nearby at the newly consecrated Valley of the Fallen, a huge cathedral carved out of a mountain, where Spain’s caudillo Francisco Franco was also buried in 1975.
For decades the Valley of the Fallen was a place of pilgrimage for Falangist veterans and Spanish nationalists from various factions, who were often joined on November 20th each year (the anniversary of both José Antonio’s murder and Franco’s death) by comrades from across Europe. H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton was part of BNP delegations to the Valley on several occasions during the 1990s.
The left-wing government in Madrid have for several years made clear their determination to desecrate José Antonio’s grave as an act of political spite. Last autumn they introduced new laws designed to criminalise aspects of Spanish history. One was designated a “democratic memory law” and the other was a new law against “anti-semitism”, which effectively means a law exempting Jews and Zionism from criticism.
José Antonio’s family surrendered to official pressure, and took the decision to go ahead with his exhumation and reburial of his remains at Madrid’s San Isidro cemetery.
H&D correspondent Isabel Peralta first wrote about the impending exhumation of José Antonio in Issue 110 of our magazine, and also made several videos discussing related issues (see versions below with English subtitles).
Isabel has recently been banned from Twitter but has a new website at www.isabelperalta.net with an English version at www.isabelperalta.net/english
Reports on the Spanish government’s attack on their own history will appear at these sites and here at H&D. Isabel also writes in the forthcoming edition of our magazine, which will be published at the start of May.
St George’s Day – Celebrate the Spirit of St George!
The editor and assistant editor would like to wish all H&D readers a very happy St George’s Day.
While St George’s Day – April 23rd – is mainly forgotten, ignored or even ridiculed by the liberal / left establishment, who by the way have no qualms about promoting everybody else’s national day, culture and heritage – apart from ours – we nationalists remember and celebrate it.
In past years our movement used to celebrate St George’s Day with large marches and rallies all over England, including the NF’s famous events in Bradford (Yorkshire) in 1976, Wood Green (North London) in 1977, and Leicester (East Midlands) in 1979. Sadly those days are long gone now.
As Sir Oswald Mosley said on St George’s Day 1937:
“In the lives of great nations comes the moment of decision, comes the moment of destiny – and this nation again and again in the great hours of fate has swept aside the little men of talk and delay, and has decided to follow men and movements who say we go forward to action! Let who dare follow us in this hour.”
While many English (and British) nationalists feel a fierce national pride for the St George’s cross and the patron saint’s day, England in fact shares St George with a host of other countries and places. Each has its own unusual customs surrounding his feast day, including:
Catalonia, Spain – St George (Sant Jordi) is associated with several places in Spain but one of the most colourful is Barcelona. A public holiday is held in the area and has several similarities with Valentine’s Day, with roses and books being exchanged by lovers. Barcelona’s most popular street Las Ramblas becomes awash with flower and book sellers. Catalonia has managed to export the tradition as UNESCO adopted the date as World Book Day. And FC Barcelona have the St George cross in the club’s badge.
Albania – Albanians celebrate St George’s day by going out and lighting a large bonfire and playing around it as a sign of joy.
Bulgaria – Roasting a whole lamb is traditional on St George’s Day in Bulgaria as he is the patron saint of shepherds. It is seen as a day when evil enchantments can be broken and a blessed day when the saint blesses the crop and morning dew, so many walk in the early morning to wash their face in the fresh dew.
Croatia – Croatians also use fire to mark St George’s Day which is considered the first day of Spring. In the Slavic tradition girls are dressed as goddesses in leaves and sing for locals.
Back in England normally many local pubs in White working class area (and even a few in the middle class suburbs) would organise events to celebrate St George’s Day, but most would be content with just putting out a few England flags (then taking them down the next day – so as not to offend!)
This year a number of H&D supporters will be taking part in the big St George’s Day parades in Nottingham in the East Midlands and Solihull in the West Midlands. Closer to H&D Towers, the Blackburn Times pub in Blackburn town centre is again organising an all-day party to celebrate St George’s Day, to the horror of the local Labour Council, who fall over backwards to promote alien events.
Of course the Woke, politically correct, do-gooder, snowflake brigade, etc, would rather St George’s Day be forgotten, and confined to the dustbin of history, along with Empire Day, Trafalgar Day etc.
However, St George’s Day and the spirit of St George will still be celebrated at H&D Towers (where England flags fly proudly all the year round), where the editor and webmaster will raise a glass a two to our patron saint, to England and to the English, while there’s still a few of us left!
And finally, to quote from William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1598):
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhood’s cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
New party set to emerge from Patriotic Alternative
After several months of discussions over whether and when Patriotic Alternative should register as a political party, PA’s national administration officer Kenny Smith and his fiancée Claire Ellis have resigned to create a new party. They are backed by six regional organisers: Si Crane (Scotland), Anthony Burrows (East Midlands), Fraser Patterson (SE England), Laurence Somerset (SW England), Jerome O’Reilly (Wales), and Connor Marlow (West Midlands).
Their new organisation will be known as the Homeland Party. According to a statement issued on Thursday evening, 32 of PA’s 54 officials are quitting to join Homeland.
However, despite speculation in ‘anti-fascist’ circles, PA’s deputy leader Laura Towler and her husband, Yorkshire regional organiser Sam Melia, are supporting PA’s founder and leader Mark Collett, and at least two of the departing ROs have already been replaced.
Unlike earlier splits this seems to be a genuine difference of opinion over movement strategy, not a question of personal bitterness or allegations of impropriety.
In a letter circulated to senior activists on 12th April, Kenny Smith said that he had been concerned about the direction of PA since last December. He wrote of a failure of political direction; “no focus on community politics”; and “no real effort to get registered as a political party”.
He drew the conclusion that PA’s “overfocus on online streaming” meant that PA had become “a glorified social club”.
At first in this 12th April letter, Kenny stated that he would not be “joining any other organisation, but a week later (having been approached by numerous senior figures in PA) he has created the Homeland Party and states that he has the backing of 32 of the 54 PA officers.
The PA leadership’s response has essentially been to emphasise “business as usual”. Mark Collett and Laura Towler (alongside Eastern England regional organiser Steve Blake) addressed an online gathering of more than 60 supporters hosted by Radio Albion on 20th April. Laura maintained that much of the “split” talk amounted to “Chinese whispers” and that outside Scotland only seventeen people had confirmed their departure from PA.
H&D has no reason to doubt the honesty of the leaders of either side in this split. No doubt Laura was being strictly truthful in stating this on Thursday, but equally there’s no doubt that those seventeen will by now have taken significant numbers of PA supporters with them.
There’s good reason to hope that this will not be the sort of bitter division that has scarred our movement in the past, and that even when two separate groups are established – PA and the Homeland Party – they will form part of a racial nationalist movement that moves towards unity rather than atomisation.
PA is moving to a new membership structure but still seems a long way from registering as a political party with the Electoral Commission.
In a live stream broadcast on Thursday night, Mark and Laura addressed three key issues:
– PA’s vetting system; they did not wish to “do away with” the vetting system but felt that it had been applied in too strict a manner that had alienated some potential activists. Mark Collett wanted a more flexible system, allowing regional organisers more autonomy to adopt the level of security vetting they found appropriate.
– PA’s political direction; Mark resented the imputation that he is not interested in “community politics”; he points out that alongside his regular online streaming, he has himself been on the frontline in many demonstrations nationwide, including most recently the protests outside hotels taken over by “asylum seekers”;
– The paid position offered to Kenny; Mark and Laura said that as late as Monday and Tuesday this week, they had made offers to Kenny in an effort to retain his services with PA; however Kenny and some regional organisers appear to have lost confidence in PA’s national leadership.
PA leader Mark Collett has offered to accept any of the dissidents back into PA, but it seems likely that the outcome of these disagreements will be two separate organisations – one mainly focused on traditional politics including election campaigns, and the other working through podcasts, video streams and the like as well as public demonstrations.
In his own response to the PA crisis, also broadcast online to supporters, Kenny Smith emphasised the poor state of PA security when he was appointed and the undoubted fact that he had made dramatic improvements with the vetting policy, even though this was unpopular in some quarters.
Kenny points out that nationalism has become an “online world” where there is “a massive amount of fear”. He sees the vetting policy as an essential step in converting PA’s recruits into real world rather than online activists, and he stresses that this was never a matter of personal ambition or wages, but rather of acquiring the necessary authority to help taking the movement forward.
Part of the dispute within PA’s national leadership seems to be about the speed and scale of that conversion from the Internet to “real life”. On both sides, the proof will be in the extent to which “community politics” manages to put down real world roots, whether in electoral politics or in other forms of action.
H&D wishes both PA and the new Homeland Party well and looks forward to their complementary contributions to the essential cause of racial nationalism.
Italy on the front line of African migrant ‘invasion’
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has warned EU leaders of an ever-worsening immigration crisis amid an ‘invasion’ from North Africa.
Meloni (who entered politics as a young activist in the neo-fascist party MSI and now heads a coalition of conservative and semi-nationalist parties) is derided by the liberal left as Europe’s most ‘far right’ leader since the Second World War. Her election victory last September was partly due to her promise to deal with Italy’s immigration crisis, but for reasons mainly beyond her control these problems have worsened rather than improved during her premiership.
Part of the crisis is due to dysfunctional governments in Tunisia and Libya. The collapse of Colonel Gadafy’s dictatorship in 2011 has led to a decade of chaos in Libya, where various warlords and factions battle for influence but have no interest in blocking the flow of illegal migrants (often crossing Libya from other parts of Africa). Meanwhile Tunisia’s own dictatorship is on the brink of collapse, and despite Meloni’s urging, the European Union and IMF are reluctant to send aid or loans that might encourage the Tunisians to cooperate in effective anti-immigration measures.
The numbers involved in this Mediterranean migrant trade dwarf the problems of ‘small boats’ crossing the English Channel. Many H&D readers have justifiable doubts about Meloni, but she is surely correct to argue that the problem can only be addressed by concerted European action, not by any individual government.
As Sir Oswald Mosley suggested decades ago, and as Meloni is now arguing, the most credible approach would have to combine resolute action against ‘people traffickers’ (whom Meloni proposes to jail for up to 16 years) with aid to African governments that will be strictly conditional on these governments turning off the immigration tap.
The problem is that African governments might seek to take advantage of the situation by blackmailing Europe: an example of shameless surrender to such blackmail is the Spanish government’s deal with Morocco, which inter alia led to the prosecution of H&D correspondent Isabel Peralta.
Fundamentally the answer to this migrant crisis is for Europeans to rediscover their confidence, get off their knees, and cease apologising for the ruthless methods necessary to secure our borders.
French nationalists forge ahead: Macron’s project in crisis
‘Centrist’ French President Emmanuel Macron – the ultimate Rothschild / Goldman Sachs politician – was lionised by international liberal journalists when he defeated nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen in 2017 (and to a lesser extent when he won re-election last year).
But the wheels have now come off Macron’s globalist project, and French nationalists once again seem poised for power.
The immediate crisis is due to Macron’s proposals to raise the pension age, as part of a package of reforms designed to shift social and economic policies away from the traditional French ‘big state’ towards a more Anglo-American, privatised, ‘business friendly’ model. Having failed to win a majority at last year’s parliamentary elections, Macron has opted to bypass the National Assembly and impose his new policy by presidential decree. This approach – reminiscent of the most chaotic years of Germany’s Weimar Republic – has understandably inflamed violent street protests.
Both the traditional left and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National have strongly resisted these moves and present themselves as champions of French workers. Le Pen has for more than a decade succeeded in realigning her party (founded as the Front National by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen) towards what some would regard as more ‘left-wing’ economic policies.
Meanwhile Le Pen’s rival Éric Zemmour is pitching for a very different vote. His party Reconquête is more hardline on racial questions and less squeamish than Le Pen on issues related to French history, such as the legacy of Marshal Philippe Pétain’s wartime government at Vichy. Perhaps because Zemmour is Jewish, he has an ‘alibi’ that allows him to be relatively frank about Second World War history and more tolerant of semi-revisionist positions, from which Le Pen (unlike her father) is desperate to dissociate herself.
More directly relevant to most French voters, however, is Zemmour’s far more conservative stance on economic questions, where Reconquête is much closer to the Anglo-American mainstream right and pitches for middle-class voters, competing with the declining French conservative party (now rebranded as ‘Republicans’). Zemmour’s allies present his party as the only real voice of the ‘right’ in French politics.
In the most recent opinion polls, Zemmour is backed by 6-7% of the electorate (about the same as his 7.1% at last April’s presidential election), while Le Pen would lead a hypothetical first round with 30-33%, a significant advance on her 23.2% last year. Le Pen is well ahead of Macron’s likely successors as ‘centrist’ candidate, who would take 23-24% in the first round and compete with the far-left for the privilege of facing Le Pen in a second round run-off. (Macron himself is constitutionally barred from standing for a third term.)
In a legislative election, Le Pen’s RN would compete with the far-left, polling roughly 26% each, ahead of the President’s party on 22%. An alliance of the Republicans and other conservative parties is presently polling only 10-11%; while Reconquête polls slightly under 5%, as do dissident elements of the once-mighty Socialist Party who refuse to ally with the far-left. This is an obvious recipe for continued stalemate in the National Assembly, even if another ‘centrist’ President succeeded Macron.
Zemmour will turn 65 in August, and would be almost 69 at the next scheduled presidential election in 2027. The main far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is seven years older than Zemmour, and even Marine Le Pen (a decade younger than Zemmour) is seen by some French nationalists as only having one more credible shot at the presidency.
Given the strange dynastic pattern of French nationalism, the future of the movement might still belong to Marine’s niece Marion Maréchal, who is allied to Zemmour. To be a credible leader and future presidential candidate, Maréchal will have to transcend bitter rivalries (including a personal split with her aunt); bridge the gap between the RN’s economic interventionism and Reconquête’s pro-capitalist stance; continue to present racially conscious nationalism as serious and electable; and escape the taint of Putinism that caused serious damage to Zemmour’s campaign last year.
This might seem a tough proposition, but the crises and contradictions facing ‘centrist’, liberal and leftist strands in French politics are even more intractable.
Despite many obvious obstacles, the future of French politics belongs to nationalism. Jean-Marie Le Pen changed European politics when he built the Front National into a serious electoral force during the 1980s: in their different ways, his daughter and granddaughter have a genuine chance of entering the Elysée Palace as President of France.
