You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Gavin Mortimer has narrated this article for you to listen to The builder who has been working on my house in Burgundy will be voting for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally on Sunday in the first round of the French parliamentary election but I suspect I know where his vote will go given that his assistant is voting for Le Pen ‘What do I think of Macron?’ retorted the electrician It’s not that surprising in this neck of the woods The National Rally romped to victory in the Yonne department in the recent European elections Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party candidate The Yonne was one of 22 (out of a total of 101) departments in which the National Rally broke the 40 per cent threshold they triumphed in a staggering 96 departments Of the five departments that resisted Le Pen and her troops three were its suburbs and the fifth was the Caribbean island of Martinique Paris voted for Raphaël Glucksmann’s Socialists; Hauts-de-Seine Paris is the richest of France’s 101 departments The Yonne department is 69th on the rich list My builder is self-employed and his daily rate is €150 He needs a day off midweek because he’s in his late fifties and suffering from a bad shoulder He did his national service in the parachute regiment and loved it Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3 Already a subscriber? Log in