"Lurn" French with the Front National

Hands up those of you out there who are literally word perfect when it comes to writing.

You never, ever make a mistake of any kind. Your grammar, spelling and the "Eats, shoots and leaves" of punctuation" are all irreproachable.

For those mere mortals among us, all too often errors creep in.

Usually it don't matter none, because others will perhaps not even spot the mistake or, if they do, will be indulgent.

Thankfully for some of us working in fields where it's important to get it right (for fear of giving the wrong impression), there is often a safety net available in the form of a sub-editor or a ruddy good proof reader.

It's a shame - or maybe on second thoughts, perhaps not - that the same cannot be said for the far-right Front National's (FN) candidate in this year's race to be mayor of Paris.

Someone in Wallerand de Saint-Just's team - for that's his name - clearly didn't run the copy for his campaign pledges through spellcheck before sending it off to the printers.

Yes - as an aside - Saint-Just is a man.

Wallerand de Saint-Just (screenshot from YouTube video)

And there you all thought that the race to become the next mayor of Paris was an all-female affair because that's what the (foreign) media has been reporting.

Well it ain't.

Sure both the leading candidates are women.....Anne Hidalgo for the Socialist party and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (NKM) for the centre-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (Union for a popular movement, UMP).

And the second round slogfest will undoubtedly be between them.

But the first round is not an all-female affair because both the FN with Saint-Just and the Greens with Christophe Najdovski, are putting up male candidates.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand, as trivial as it might be in a political world in which image is so important.

You see Saint-Just wants to protect and promote French - the language that is - as part of his campaign.

It's apparently not just a desire to keep at bay all those nasty and devilish foreign (English) words wot keep spoiling la langue de Molière.

No, it's also a wish to promote French, especially in the Paris which "as the country's capital has (paraphrasing) an obligation to show the way."

In other words, Saint-Just wants to "defend" that French language.

Except that's not quite how it came across in the official programme handed out to journalists during a recent press conference.

Because, as you can see from the accompanying screenshot, Saint-Just also appears to be into neoligisms, albeit it cocked-up ones, in wanting to, "défenFre la langue française".

"défenFre" (screenshot from Europe 1 report)

Yes, it's clearly a typo and one which is "understandable given that on a French keyboard the "d" and the "f" are next to each other.

But still it raises a chuckle and is a reminder that in Paris at least, where it doesn't stand any chance of winning, the FN can afford to appear suitably amateurish.

An alliance between the UMP and Front National - a sign of things to come?

Next year the French - and many foreign residents registered in France, mainly EU citizens - will have the chance to go to the polls here in the country's municipal elections.

They'll be choosing the composition of local councils and, as a consequence, who'll be their mayor for the next six years.

Even though turnout might not be as high as it traditionally is for presidential and parliamentary elections, the chances are that (going on past results) a fair number of people will be exercising their democratic right at the ballot boxes.

And that inevitably means the results will be perceived by many as a sort of mid-term test for the French president, François Hollande, the government and the Socialist party.

That's not all of course. The performance of the other parties will also be scrutinised.

Will the opposition centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a popular movement, UMP) finally be able to smooth over its internal differences and actually "win" an election?

How will the far-right Front National (FN) fare under its leader Marine Le Pen?

Will Jean-Luc Mélanchon's 180,000-strong (his figures - 30,000 according to the police) May 5 demonstration gather momentum to become a ballot box protest vote?

Questions, questions, questions.

Doubtless many will be asked and answered in different ways before, during and after the elections depending on the political spin.

One thing's for sure, with over 36,000 mayors to be elected up and down the country, party machines will have a tough job ensuring local activists toe the line.

That's already happening, with the UMP being forced to suspend one of its members for contravening party policy.

Arnaud Cléré
(screenshot France 3 television)

Arnaud Cléré is, or rather was until Monday, a member of the party in the town of Gamaches in the northern département of Somme.

He doesn't actually hold elected office, but wants to. And last week he announced he would be standing in next year's local elections on a list which also contained members of the FN.

It seems that for the 34-year-old, the proverbial "end justifies the means" - winning at any cost.

"It's all about strategy," he said.

"Gamaches has been in the hands of the communists or socialists for the past 30 years," he continued.

"There's no shame in an alliance with the FN...especially if it helps bring the right to power."

Not surprisingly perhaps Cléré's membership of the UMP has been suspended in line with party policy which the UMP leader Jean-François Copé reiterated in a recent speech in Nice insisting that the Front National was "an extremist party" and there would be "no alliance with that party".

But given the current political, economic and social climate in France, does anyone out there have the sense that Cléré's "political and tactical error" as it was decribed by UMP party officials, might be perceived as something else and instead mark a sign of things to come?