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If you ask him what's wrong with France, Léonard Faraci will give you a rant that you might hear from older men in taxis and cafés across the country, a bitter message that is only surprising because it has suddenly become more politically respectable.

“People in this town realize that there are two problems,” the 69-year-old far-right politician said over a steak and frites lunch at a dreary bistro on the outskirts of this working-class town, wielding his cutlery with the calloused hands of a lifelong worker.

“One is the breakdown of social order and crime, and the other is the lack of jobs. And they have become problems that I believe began with immigration. In 1954, when I came here, you could leave a package on the doorstep of the jeweller's shop three hours before it opened. Now you couldn't think of that — these guys from Africa would steal it in a minute.”

Mr. Faraci's National Front party and its leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, have long identified immigrants as the cause of France's troubles. If elected president, Mr. Le Pen will stop all immigration, attempt to kick out immigrants and enforce mandatory cultural-purity programs.

Marignane, a southern French town known for its helicopter industry, is like many places in France: A small but visible group of its residents come from nearby Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and, although they are almost all fully French in language and customs, they tend to be excluded from France's tightly controlled job markets.

The National Front turns away from the more familiar explanation for this phenomenon — that France's employers have a problem with racism.

“Some of these people come here even though they don't know French customs, even though they're living with two wives, which is illegal, and even if they're slaughtering sheep in their bathtubs,” says Mr. Faraci, who is, in fact, an immigrant himself; he came here from Tunisia in the 1950s with his Sicilian parents. “If they can't be normal French citizens, they shouldn't be here.”

This message, often described as fascist, has always appealed to the 15 to 20 per cent of French voters who have cast their ballots for the National Front. What is new this year, as more than 40 per cent of voters remain undecided, is that similar words and ideas are suddenly being heard on the lips of respectable presidential candidates from France's mainstream political parties.

Politicians in France are still reeling from the shock of the last presidential election, in 2002, when Mr. Le Pen came in second, beating most of the mainstream parties at the ballot box. They realized that there was a huge base of voters who could be persuaded that their fears and insecurities — especially involving crime and terrorism in the wake of the al-Qaeda attacks on New York, Madrid and London — are the fault of immigrants.

Now, some of the FN's ideas and Mr. Le Pen's rhetoric are being parroted by mainstream political parties on the right and the left in a desperate and dangerous bid to attract their voters back to the centre. It is a strategy that has drawn harsh criticism: Many people say that by legitimizing the politics of the extreme right, France's presidential candidates are helping the party gain even more support.

But it is an increasingly popular tactic in elections across the Western world, as parties face voters who are often anxious about international terrorism and crime. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair has peppered his moderately left-wing politics with often intolerant-sounding messages on crime aimed at voters known as “Daily Mail readers” — aging, angry white people. This week, he was chastened for suggesting that crime is caused, not by poverty, but by some forms of black culture.

In Quebec, the success of Action Démocratique du Québec Leader Mario Dumont in last month's election has led other parties to parrot his tough-on-immigrants policy, known as “reasonable accommodation,” which requires new arrivals to adopt aspects of a predetermined Quebec culture.

Here in Marignane, the major parties are pouring money and activists into the region this week to prevent the National Front from monopolizing the presidential vote. But they aren't doing it, as they have in the past, by informing voters that the FN is a dangerous and un-French force. Instead, they are flattering the party with imitation.

Vincent Gomez, a young mayoral candidate and rising star within the ranks of France's opposition Socialist Party, has been given the task of winning back Marignane by Ségolène Royal, the party's charismatic presidential candidate. Ms. Royal has shocked the Socialist rank-and-file by introducing National Front-style ideas: Boot camp for immigrant youth, mandatory singing of the Marseillaise and a focus on crime as a cultural problem.

“You've got this rhetoric coming from the far right concerning delinquency — a recognition of it in certain communities,” Mr. Gomez said as he rallied his organizers in nearby Marseille this week. “It's important for us on the left to address this. These are real issues that Le Pen is bringing up. But we must address them in a way that's relevant to us on the left.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, the presidential candidate from the moderate right-wing UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) party and the man favoured by most polls to win the election, has in many ways changed his course even more dramatically.

In a break from the strict French unity of his colleague, current President Jacques Chirac, he had declared that France is a racist country and vowed to introduce affirmative-action laws for employers, a suggestion that had previously been unthinkable in France.