The proof? The plans to build a giant mosque for the 200000 Islamic citizens of Marseilles approved

The proof? The plans to build a giant mosque for the 200,000 Islamic citizens of Marseilles, approved in principle by the city’s centre-right Mayor, Jean-Claude Gaudin.”I don’t know if Allah is great,” Mr Mégret said. “But I know that in Marseilles, Mayor Gaudin is his prophet.”The meeting attracted at least 700 people on a rainy night: mostly male, mostly 40 plus, with some wearing the old, giveaway, French far right uniform of flat caps and clashing ties and shirts.In the last municipal elections, six years ago, the National Front, then united, scored its greatest electoral coup, scooping three town halls in the greater Marseilles region, and winning the poll in three-way contests in Toulon, Orange and Marignane. Two years later, in a re-run election in Vitrolles, just north of Marseilles, Mr Mégret’s wife, Catherine, won the first, and still the only, outright majority for the far right in France in recent political history.The victories were widely interpreted as the beginning of a far right surge to power in a country then racked by recession and political scandals. Six years later, the far right is shattered: divided into two mutually loathing wings, deflated in the polls and likely to lose at least two of its towns – Toulon and Vitrolles – when the municipal elections are completed in the second round next weekend.The National Front, which has fallen from about 15 per cent in national polls to 8 per cent, is running candidates in only 111 French towns, compared with 281 six years ago.

(Mr Le Pen’s male-dominated party has been badly hit by the new law insisting that electoral lists must be 50 per cent female.) The NF is likely to hold on to the town of Orange, but the Mayor, Jacques Bompard, is playing down his NF connections and running on local issues Mr Mégret’s MNR seems to be doing no better In some ways, it is doing worse. It registers barely 3 per cent in national opinion polls.Mr Mégret’s campaign to be Mayor of Marseilles is going nowhere. He will be lucky to reach double figures tomorrow, according to the last opinion polls published two weeks ago. His wife, Catherine, seems almost certain to lose Vitrolles, an unlovely “new town” on the edge of the Luberon hills, which was presented by the Mégrets as a “laboratory” for “nationalist” ideas after she won the mayorship in 1997.Mrs Mégret has since twice been convicted of breaking the law with racist policies or racist comments.

“She has no chance of winning this time,” said Christian Monferrini, 42, the campaign manager for the centre-right candidate, Christian Rossi. “The people of Vitrolles are sick of being associated, all over the world, with the politics of the far right.”The Mégret victory in Vitrolles in 1997, far from being the breakthrough predicted, was the catalyst for the destruction of the National Front. It boosted Mr Mégret’s importance, and ambition, as the unofficial No 2 in the movement, directly provoking the confrontation with Mr Le Pen that split the party two years later. But if the “breakthrough” of the French far right was exaggerated last time, this weekend’s poor poll results may equally disguise its gradual re-emergence in a new, potentially more insidious form.Mr Mégret’s MNR will present lists in 396 towns – more than the united NF managed last time.In a dozen towns, the MNR has persuaded the local NF to re-unite with it on a common list, despite a viciously worded command by Mr Le Pen to treat the “Mégretistes” as the enemy.Le Pen is 72; Mégret is 51 Mégret’s strategy is clear. He may not have Le Pen’s brutal charisma but he is a plausible, smoothly spoken, managerial demagogue, more in the mould of Jörg Haider in Austria And Le Pen is getting no younger. “We have already won the first round of these elections,” Mr Mégret declared this week.

“We have won the battle to implant ourselves at local level in every town in this country.”* The French municipal elections tomorrow are likely to deliver a blow to the President, Jacques Chirac, but also a series of minor setbacks for his Prime Minister, and rival, Lionel Jospin.The city of Paris, Mr Chirac’s fiefdom on the centre-right for 18 years until he became President in 1995, will almost certainly vote left in the first round of the city and town elections. If the trend is confirmed in the second round next week, the Socialist candidate, Bertrand Delanoe, will become the city’s first left-wing mayor for 131 years.. Six victims of last Sunday’s bridge disaster in Portugal have washed up on Spain’s rocky “death coast” more than 200km (125 miles) to the north. Six victims of last Sunday’s bridge disaster in Portugal have washed up on Spain’s rocky “death coast” more than 200km (125 miles) to the north.
The identities of four bodies were confirmed – via photos sent on the internet – as women who were on the bus that plunged into the swollen Douro when a 116-year-old bridge collapsed.Two more bodies appeared yesterday near the Galician coastal town of Camariñas. The region is known as Costa da Morte because of its rocks and strong currents.Experts were initially sceptical that the bodies could have travelled so far But the evidence was there. The women were well dressed; one wore Portuguese underwear, another wore a watch showing Portuguese time – an hour earlier than Spanish – and another wore gold earrings from the region around Castelo de Paiva where the tragedy happened.Twelve bus seats and personal objects washed up nearby. The long journey was due to a combination of weather conditions.Rescue workers said the Douro’s raging current probably swept victims 40km downstream and out to sea within two hours of the bridge collapsing.