He's back!
Jon Henley in the Guardian - Le Pen in sight of a regional triumph:

There are many grounds for mistrusting Jean-Marie Le Pen, but electoral prediction is not generally among them. When he hazards a guess the veteran leader of France's far right is rarely wrong. And this, he said yesterday, is the most winnable election of all his long career.

Even his opponents agree that next spring's regional polls, the first since the presidential and parliamentary elections last year which produced the biggest upset in the country's postwar political history, will probably give the pugnacious National Front president his greatest chance yet of a historic victory.

"I see things very clearly," he said yesterday, formally beginning his campaign for the presidency of the Provence, Alpes and Côte d'Azur (Paca) region before a battery of TV cameras in a chartered yacht replete with champagne and canapes in the Baie des Anges, off Nice.

"There will be three major contenders in the second round," he said. "Neither the right nor the left will withdraw - as they did to wreck our chances last year - and they certainly won't merge their lists.

"I am confident that here, finally, we will emerge as the winners of a three-way battle."

Le Pen is no friend of the Anglosphere, but at least he doesn't pretend he is.