Postcard from Carcassonne 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 Barths 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.Embed from Getty ImagesThe cycling angle is that todays 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 its hard to find a precedent going back to then. If readers can crowdsource an exception itd still be rare.Several reasons explain this. The RN just hasnt 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 doesnt explain it all. Places like Toulon, Bziers 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 dpartments and rgions 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 dpartment and so got to pick his Lauwin-Planque. And not the bordering town of Hnin-Beaumont which has been the electoral fiefdrom of RN president Marine Le Pen.But what if there were other factors, a deliberate avoidance? Thats harder to prove and unlikely. Tour director Christian Prudhomme was a signatory to a letter when people Frances sports sphere cautioned against voting for the far-right in the 2017 presidential election but thats probably as far as it goes.Barths inherited this stage as the hosting agreement was signed before the elections. If today is a first, its 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 Tours shrunk its carbon footprint, promotes cycling as transport and celebrates biodiversity. The Tour de France Femmes happened in part because politicians denounced the mens 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 isnt. There are swipes about too many foreign starts (its 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; its a cherished institution for many including the RNs voter base.The rise of the far-right isnt exclusive to France. On the other side of the Alps weve seen Italians ministers deployng the Giro dItalia to promote gentle nationalism; the new maglia rosa sponsor this year is a region run by La Lega.Similarly its 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 Milans Bocconi university and the University of Zrich 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 Barths may not be in a hurry to have the Tour back.The post Postcard from Carcassonne first appeared on The Inner Ring.
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