The stage starts in Carcassonne, the eighth start or finish in ten years. Tim Wellens won Stage 15 here last year. But something has changed since then.
France held local elections in March and Christophe Barthès was voted in as the new mayor. Labelled the “Trump of Occitanie” for his provocative tendencies, he is part of the far-right Rassemblement national (“National rally”, RN) party. The RN made gains in other town halls and leads in national opinion polls. It is possible their candidate becomes president of France next year.
The cycling angle is that today’s visit seems to be the first time a stage of the Tour de France is hosted by a far-right mayor. The RN, ex Front National, was founded in 1972 and it’s hard to find a precedent going back to then. If readers can crowdsource an exception it’d still be rare.
Several reasons explain this. The RN just hasn’t had many mayors until recently. Another is the towns they hold are in places infrequently visited, right in the South-East corner along the coast. But that doesn’t explain it all. Places like Toulon, Béziers and Orange ought to have hosted the race but have only seen the race traverse these bastions of the far-right.
A more complicated reason is the layers of local government above municipalities like départments and régions usually take part in the bidding and none are RN-controlled. So when Lille hosted the Tour de France start last year, Stage 2 started in Lauwin-Planque whose mayor has been centre-right Christian Poiret. He is also chief of the Douai agglomeration, a councillor and president of the Nord départment and so got to pick his Lauwin-Planque. And not the bordering town of Hénin-Beaumont which has been the electoral fiefdrom of RN president Marine Le Pen.
But what if there were other factors, a deliberate avoidance? That’s harder to prove and unlikely. Tour director Christian Prudhomme was a signatory to a letter when people France’s sports sphere cautioned against voting for the far-right in the 2017 presidential election but that’s probably as far as it goes.
Barthès inherited this stage as the hosting agreement was signed before the elections. If today is a first, it’s not going to be the last and this is where the twist comes.
The Tour might belong to the crowds by the road and broadcasters are influential customers. Local politicians are big clients too. Lately organisers ASO have moved on several things at the behest of green politicians elected in a wave at the end of the previous decade. Many had been vocal in their opposition to the race. The green party, in office in cities like Bordeaux, Rennes and Grenoble refused to host stages several times decrying the race as polluting and promoting big business.
To win over town halls the Tour’s shrunk its carbon footprint, promotes cycling as transport and celebrates biodiversity. The Tour de France Femmes happened in part because politicians denounced the men’s race as macho; yes it was the right time to launch the event but ASO had an implicit list of ready hosts for les femmes.
So what happens if the political wind is blowing in the other direction? Will the Tour change? If ecologists had been vocal against the Tour de France at times, the RN isn’t. There are swipes about too many foreign starts (“it’s not the Tour de France any more“) but the Tour could call their bluff and ask its French mayors to step in as hosts instead. Criticising the Tour is France is akin to taking a pop at kittens, cheese or summer holidays; it’s a cherished institution for many including the RN’s voter base.
The rise of the far-right isn’t exclusive to France. On the other side of the Alps we’ve seen Italians ministers deployng the Giro d’Italia to promote gentle nationalism; the new maglia rosa sponsor this year is a region run by La Lega.
Similarly it’s not far-fetched to imagine RN mayors wanting to use the Tour for their soft propaganda. Why encourage cycling over car use or show films at the start of the daily Tour coverage talking about biodiversity when you could celebrate French farm produce? What about removing TV coverage from FranceTV to reward a more RN-friendly channel?
These are all marginal changes. The Tour organisers will want to preserve their event from politics in part because this is what keeps it special. But they do bend to the priorities of mayors and their electorate.
Some academic work – a preprint – even suggests that hosting the Tour could be electorally disadvantageous for the RN. In “Cycling through Elections: The Political Consequences of the Tour de France” from last September academics from Milan’s Bocconi university and the University of Zürich suggest that if the Tour comes to town then the vote for the RN dips by a small but measurable amount because the race boosts the local economy and above all it gives those living in often “left-behind” places a feeling of recognition which dampens the tendency to turn towards populism. Mayor Barthès may not be in a hurry to have the Tour back.
Very interesting postcard! Thanks a lot.
Is that figure at the end essentially a graph of RN vote share vs population? The bigger the municipality (a) the lower the far-right share and (b) the more likely it is to host a Tour stage?
I believe they pass Mont Segur today? The last citadel of the Occitan Cathars to hold out against the global and imperialistic forces of Church and State.
It’s built on a spur of rock known locally as a ‘Pog’.