France’s extreme-right National Front is poised to win its first town council in a decade after gaining ground in the north’s former mining heartlands of Pas de Calais, far from the party’s traditional southern base. The far-right party, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, has reached record popularity in Hénin-Beaumont, a depressed former coalmining town struggling with high unemployment,... 

The French political establishment scrambled yesterday to try to block a significant electoral breakthrough by the daughter of the veteran far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. Marine Le Pen, 40, and her running-mate topped the poll on Sunday night’s municipal by-election in Hénin-Beaumont, an impoverished former coal mining town near Lens in the Pas de Calais. Having won nearly 40 per cent of...