The real cleavage is between those who have chosen an internationalist route and those who have chosen to defend our

The real cleavage is between those who have chosen an internationalist route and those who have chosen to defend our national borders, our national values and our national identity..."I pitch him a rather obvious trick question. Le Pen's name has hardly come up in his replies so far: Megret has concentrated on his vision of the future and - implicitly - his criticisms of the limited, pre-Megret ambitions of the Front. Is it not time for the Front to rid itself of its most obvious electoral burden, Jean-Marie Le Pen and his 70 per cent plus negatives? Megret doesn't rise to that but he doesn't conspicuously defend Le Pen's electoral assets either."I'm not going to be drawn into that kind of discussion. I prefer to concentrate on the contempt that exists for the other political figures in France." This was the real lesson of Vitrolles, he says, where the FN defeated an ineffective and allegedly corrupt socialist mayor, supported by all the major parties. The two most destructive factors in politics are "corruption and powerlessness".According to leaks from inside the paquebot, Le Pen wants Megret's skin But he does not quite know how to get it. One way, it is suggested, might be to re-start the rumours launched by anti-Megret forces in the FN a few years ago that Megret is a closet homosexual. These rumours were later scotched when Megret married the subsequent mayoress of Vitrolles, Catherine Raskovsy, the daughter of Jewish-Russian immigrants.

(Nothing is simple in the FN; Megret's grandfather was Greek. But then 40 per cent of French people have one foreign grandparent and few of them - certainly not Megret - resemble the Bjorn Borg look-alikes presented as the origins of the French nation in FN propaganda).Le Pen has, as mentioned earlier, been much preoccupied with homosexuality lately. He makes vulgar asides in his speeches, in which he talks of defending the FN from the right and the left, and in the case of certain establishment politicians, from behind. Is this also some kind of coded warning to Megret?Le Pen's problem is that, for the first time in the history of the FN, there is a force within the party with an independent power base. Half the regional leaders of the FN are Megret supporters; so are at least half the members of the national committee. Megret has enemies like Bruno Gollnisch, the secretary general, promoted by Le Pen three years ago specifically to counter him.

But Megret has continued to introduce bright young men, loyal to him rather than Le Pen, to positions of power within the FN. His position, especially after the victory in Vitrolles, is seemingly unassailable. That is what especially annoys Le Chef.There is another problem for Le Pen, whose most powerful single driving force, according to former associates, is not ideology but vanity. He could not bear to stand and lose in next spring's parliamentary elections if, at the same time, Megret stood and won. Megret has been cleverly nursing a constituency in the south which includes two FN towns, Vitrolles and Marignane.