When Marine's dad ran it, it was filled with Holocaust minimizers and other Jew-hating trash, such as, well, her father. Sarkozy talked a good game when he was in power before -- his election victory was in no small part due to his tough talk on how to handle the "yoots" who were at that time (probably still are) burning tires and entire cars in the no-go zones in the purpose-built immigrant suburbs of Paris. Instead, he did very damned little. The snap-back to the Socialists was a massive repudiation of the UMP, such that, after avoiding bogus lawfare prosecution by the PS, he wound up changing his party's name to shed that loser image of the UMP.
He's probably the best choice, as Hollande's response to the Paris slaughter looks expeditious at best. But what really will Sarkozy do differently? We dont't have to worry about or speculate about what the FN would do, because the FN ain't getting the power, period, no matter how much support it gets from Vlad. Retreat from the UE is actually less likely now, in France, than it was before the mass-murder. There's a definite groundswell against muzzies and immigrants in general, but what results remains to be seen.
OTOH, looke what happened in the Netherlands -- Geert Wilders' party managed to not join the new ruling coalition, but holds the cards because it *should* have been asked to form the new ruling coalition, wasn't, everyone in the Netherlands knows it, and his moderate hand at the tiller means his party is the only thing propping the ruling coalition in place, and he and his party are looking like the only reasonable people in Dutch politics.
Another contrast is UKIP -- Farage, like Wilders, echoes the Pooty Line in Europe and complains about the Turks, but UKIP got its ass handed to it in the recent UK elections, while the Tories swept to an historic victory and outright majority. UKIP has probably peaked, including its barely effectual presence in the EU parliament (the Euroskeptics from various EU member nations have been effectively sidelined), and Labour is destroying itself by repeatedly doubling down from one radical leader to one even worse (they're on their third, at least). Even the UK comedians, who swing left to say the least, really didn't like Brown, really really didn't like Miliband, and seem to view Corbyn as so bad that they no longer dare to criticize him or Labour itself.
I don’t understand what you say about Wilders and his PVV. They are 12/150 in the House and 9/75 in the Senate. That is a pretty low number of seats to expect to be a kingmaker as it would have taken them and 2 more partners from the current opposition to kick out the PvdA in the House and the Senate is lost for any right leaning government anyway.
Of course I might be very wrong as my interest in Netherlands politics has been very casual. Could there have been a better coalition with PVV in it?
You can’t directly compare proportional representation Netherlands result with majoritarian UK and France anyway. PVV has much less popular support than either UKIP or FN.
Had the UK election results been calculated in the German fashion, UKIP would have 73 seats.