WITH Joe Biden calling for regime change on Russia’s border, with arms pouring into the country and with charges against the Russians of “genocide,” the war in Ukraine, which those fanning the flames, most prominently the US media, seem to want to go on indefinitely, is having a devastating impact on all of Europe and particularly in France. There it is possible that war could help bring the far right to power in the presidential elections.

Emmanuel Macron has spent the campaign appearing to be above the fray, unwilling to debate the other candidates and simply presenting himself as, in US parlance “presidential,” in the French “kingly” — the captain of the ship, the only one able to steer a course for France and Europe through the tempest of the war in Ukraine and its destabilisation of the European economy.

The argument though is beginning to fall apart as the two candidates who have most strictly hammered home the effects of the war on France’s working people, Jean-Luc Melenchon and Marine Le Pen, have gained in the polls approaching Sunday’s election with Le Pen also gaining in a predicted second round against Macron. Le Pen though, has infused her sentiment for ordinary French with an unhealthy dose of anti-immigrant rhetoric.