Islam versus Europe

The UMP, the party of Nicholas Sarkozy and the ruling party in France, has begun to break up. In reality the UMP is an umbrella group for a number of smaller conservative and centrist parties. Today, one of the centrist groups, the badly misnamed Radical Party, decided to leave; its leader Jean-Louis Borloo, who had fallen out with Sarkozy, announced the party will field an independent presidential candidate, which will almost certainly be him.

The more centrist members of the UMP have been unhappy about the anti-immigration and anti-Islam gestures the UMP government has been making recently, even if they have been more token than real. They have accused it of pandering to the voters of the national front and validating the anti-Islam discourse of Marine Le Pen.

There are various permutations in which this could either harm or help Sarkozy depending on how it plays out. The harmful scenarios are much more probable, however, and most likely this will significantly reduce Sarkozy's chances of making it into the second round of the presidential election, setting up a potential show-down between Marine Le Pen and the Socialist candidate, who will probably be the IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.