Marine Le Pen and France's Front National sense their time has come.
High unemployment and economic instability has brought a surge in public support for the party and its leader. Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader and National Front candidate for the presidential election, waves to supporters.
[Photograph: Francois Mori/AP.]
At the foot of the bronze statue of an armour-clad Joan of Arc, outside the Front National headquarters on the outskirts of Paris, someone had laid two wreaths of perfect white lilies to mark the 600th anniversary of the martyr's birth. The French far right has long claimed the peasant girl who became the scourge of the English as its symbol, rebuffing recent attempts by Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party to wrest her from them. (Observer.)
