With Brussels making national governments irrelevant, no wonder French voters are objecting to their lack of voice by threatening to back Le Pen We are familiar with the phenomenon in business. Too rigid an economy leads to a black market. A government can only impose so many rules, so many taxes, so much bureaucracy, before economic activity goes underground. Firms begin to keep false accounts. Payments are made with bricks of banknotes. Tourists ignore the official exchange rate and go to illicit money-changers on street corners. I wonder whether we are not witnessing a similar development in politics. Eighteen per cent of French voters say they will definitely vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far Right National Front – twice as many as said so before the last presidential election, which saw the old bruiser come second. I don't imagine for a moment that most of these voters actually want to see Le Pen in the Elysée. The act of supporting him, rather, is a howl of rage: a lashing out against the smug, arrogant, de haut en bas political caste that runs the Fifth Republic. Most European countries are experiencing the same phenomenon. Voters see a cartel of interchangeable politicians. The colour of their rosettes may vary, but the policies they offer don't. And there is a reason why they don't. Eighty per cent of laws within EU states come from Brussels (statistic courtesy of the German Federal Justice Ministry). The main battleground between the parties used to be the economy. But these days, governments have little discretion over how much they can spend or borrow. If they are in the euro, their interest rates are set in Frankfurt. Increasingly, the EU also tells them what and how much they can tax. Nor can they argue very much about foreign policy. A state can still decide the really big questions for itself, such as whether to invade Iraq. But the mediumsized questions – whether to sell arms to China, whether to be nice to the ayatollahs in Teheran, whether to back the anti-Castro dissidents in Cuba, whether to fund Hamas – are decided in Brussels.  The same is true of social policy, employment law, human rights, agriculture, fisheries, trade, competition, immigration and, increasingly, criminal justice. The established parties are like Lilliputians, arguing over tiny patches of political terrain while great tracts go unoccupied. 'Bonnet blanc ou blanc bonnet,' as the French say: whomever you pick, it makes no difference. So it is hardly surprising that turnout rates are plummeting all over Europe and that, of those who do vote, increasing numbers are plumping for shady parties. Le Pen and his sort are the spivs of European politics: the unlicensed operators who know how to make a quick buck out of an over-regulated system. Open that system to genuine competition and they will vanish quickly enough. Daniel Hannan is the Conservative MEP for south-east England |