Last month (May 2017), this stencilled message (The National Front shall never pass in Brighton) adorned the pavement around the Mercure Hotel on Brighton seafront. The hotel had just been used as the polling station for the French presidential election. Next Sunday (4 June) will see the same hotel used for the parliamentary elections for French nationals in Brighton and Hove.

It looks as if the NF candidate for this part of the world (Tony Thommes) might stand little chance of being elected to represent it. But there are 15 other candidates. They represent a vast range of views, from the EÉLV (the Green party, now called Europe Écologie les Verts) to the REM (Emmanuel Macron’s La République en marche ! with its mandatory exclamation mark).

Then there is le Parti communiste français (PCF) and the French branch of the pan-European Parti pirate (PP or Pirate Party) with the PP campaigning on a platform of protection of individual freedom, and in particular free access to scientific knowledge and reformed copyright laws (mainly the abolition of the latter).

One party, (formerly?) known as La France insoumise (FI or Defiant France) prefers to advertise itself using just its simple logo rather than its name.  The logo of le Parti animaliste (PA) is a somewhat more complicated affair, illustrating a strange symbiosis of man and dog.

It will be interesting to see if the REM candidate ousts Axelle Lemaire, the present Socialist Party incumbent of the north-west European parliamentary seat.