“Anti-white racism is growing in our cities.” It’s a statement that the French have heard several times over the past few years, during TV and radio interviews; debates; perhaps from their neighbor. But never before has it been heard publicly by a politician who isn’t affiliated with the far-right National Front (FN) party. So when Jean-François Copé, secretary general of France’s center-right... 

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...