One journalist sees the bigger picture

Marine Le Pen, the nationalist candidate in the recent French elections, came in third with 18% of the vote. An English journalist, Richard Waghorne, thought her policies flawed but nonetheless supported her as the only candidate representing a self-governing French nation.

Richard Waghorne has taken the lead in adopting this stance - it is a break from the usual practice in which mainstream journalists toe the two party line. Waghorne summarised his position this way:

Marine Le Pen remains, among an imperfect choice in urgent times, the only candidate capable of saving France’s control over her finances, borders, and identity. She is the only candidate available to conservative voters advancing the case for an exit from the Euro, the one measure which if executed carefully might yet save France from being swamped by foreign debts amassed elsewhere in a European project largely of its own making.

Waghorne isn't taken in by Sarkozy:

Nicholas Sarkozy has campaigned on the theme of a ‘Strong France’. His speeches consciously allude to the Fifth Republic’s founder General de Gaulle, praising an ‘Eternal France’ Sarkozy himself has never been in danger of embodying. Rather, he is the latest architect of the decline of French democracy to something bordering on irrelevance.

The most urgent, the most assiduously avoided challenge facing France is the erosion of its self-government. Sarkozy’s European policy has abetted the long-desired European federalism of the French political class.

Even though one article doesn't change a lot, it does at least set a precedent - so well done Richard Waghorne.