Sarkozy’s party in rearguard fight against Hollande

France’s main centre-right movement, wounded by the loss of its feisty champion Nicolas Sarkozy, is fighting a rearguard action in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, battling both a resurgent left and an insurgent extreme right.

With the once ubiquitous Mr Sarkozy now glimpsed only on his morning jog since his defeat last month by François Hollande, the UMP party has had to campaign without a leader against a new president promising growth and dispensing handouts despite the rekindling of the eurozone crisis.

At a party rally in Paris, the frustration was evident as the dour figure of François Fillon, Mr Sarkozy’s prime minister for five years, lashed out at the new administration.

“François Hollande seems to have completely failed to grasp the scale of this volcano rumbling under Europe’s feet,” he intoned to approving, if subdued applause.

He attacked Mr Hollande’s calls to favour growth over austerity, said measures already pledged would cost France’s strapped exchequer €20bn and accused the new president of jeopardising France’s all-important relations with Germany.

“This is what the Socialists refuse to understand. We’re not in a cyclical crisis. We are facing an existential threat,” he said.

The school gymnasium where he spoke on Thursday evening was packed with UMP supporters – including one well-coiffed woman complete with her Yorkshire terrier. The turnout was hailed by Philippe Goujon, an incumbent local UMP member of the National Assembly, as a sign that the party could perform well in the parliamentary ballots, which conclude with a second round of voting on June 17.

“Although we lost the presidential election, the result was close and our voters are very motivated,” he said. “We want to get the maximum number of seats to prevent the left from holding all the power.”

Opinion polls suggest that the UMP may come out ahead of Mr Hollande’s Socialist party in the share of the vote. But they also show that, once combined with other allies on the left, the new president is likely to win the majority of assembly seats he seeks.

The UMP’s main hope is to limit the scale of the Hollande majority so it can influence legislation and prevent the president from being able to make constitutional changes.

But a big issue for the UMP is that it is also facing a ferocious challenge from the far-right National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, in dozens of constituencies far from the genteel arrondissements of Paris where Mr Fillon appeared on Thursday.

The rise of Ms Le Pen, with her furious attacks on the euro, immigration and the French ruling establishment, is part of a pattern of protest votes on the political extremes across the EU. “The National Front is the problem,” said Alexandre Juncker, a young UMP activist at the Paris rally.

The party fears that under the two-stage election system, the Front could qualify for the second round in more than 100 constituencies, setting up a three way run-off in which a split vote on the right would let in the leftist candidate.

This has led to calls within the UMP for deals to be struck with Ms Le Pen in key constituencies from some frustrated that a combined vote on the right, including the Front, matches or outstrips the combined forces of the left.

The UMP leadership is firmly opposed. Alain Juppé, foreign minister under Mr Sarkozy, said on Friday in his blog that the “temptation” must be resisted: “The objective of the National Front is not to make an alliance with us, but to break the UMP,” he wrote.

But the party must “stop spitting on the Front”, said Mr Juncker. “We’ve got to do something. The situation at the moment is unacceptable. The barons of the UMP need to come up with a clear, forceful strategy.”

He said he could envisage an agreement with a Front that was moderating under Ms Le Pen. “It has not changed enough to make an agreement possible (now). But it is foreseeable,” he said.