Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far-right leader who built his career on a hardline stance against his twin bugbears — immigration and globalisation — is to suffer the ultimate indignity. Indebted, ageing and under fire, he has been forced to embrace both to try to save his party from bankruptcy.

Mr Le Pen's National Front, which is facing financial ruin, has admitted plans to sell its headquarters to a Chinese university in a deal estimated at between €15 million (£11.8 million) and €20 million.

Shanghai University wants to use the 5,000sqm office space — which has reverberated to Mr Le Pen's tub-thumping rants against foreigners over the past three decades — to teach French to Chinese students.

The building in Saint-Cloud, on the outskirts of Paris, would be used by some of the 20,000 Chinese people who already study in France.

The National Front sought to put a brave face on a deal that appeared to fly in the face of all that it stood for. Jean-Michel Dubois, the party's administrative director, said: “As long as the buyer has a good reputation and is financially irreproachable, his nationality doesn't matter.”

Bruno Gollnisch, the deputy chairman, even went so far as to extol Chinese virtues, saying: “They are rediscovering their own values when we are abandoning ours.”

Behind the rhetoric, however, lay the hard reality of the National Front's decline. Six years after Mr Le Pen stunned the European political class when he reached the second round of the French presidential election, the 80-year-old firebrand is now struggling to stave off marginalisation.

In the 2007 election he polled 10.44 per cent of the vote as his supporters swung behind Nicolas Sarkozy. In the subsequent legislative elections, which determine the state funding received by French political parties, the National Front obtained 4.29 per cent - driving its annual subsidies down from €4.6 million to €1.8 million. The movement founded by Mr Le Pen in 1972 was left with debts of about €8 million and creditors hammering at the door.

Fernand Le Rachinel, a millionaire and former friend of Mr Le Pen, asked a court to declare the party bankrupt after failing to recover a €6.8 million loan. The ruling is due in October.

Mr Le Pen, who has already ordered the dismissal of 20 party employees in an attempt to reduce costs, announced three months ago that he had put his armour-plated Peugeot 605 car up for auction on eBay.

The disposal of what he described as the “crown jewels” comes as Marine Le Pen, his 39-year-old daughter, positions herself to succeed him when he finally retires. She wants to tone down anti-immigrant policies to try to win over mainstream voters but is opposed by Mr Gollnisch, who is determined to conserve the far-right ideology.

If the deal with Shanghai illustrates the French movement's waning fortunes, it also highlights the rise of China's 2,200 higher education institutions. With an estimated 120,000 foreign students in China and 25,000 Chinese people leaving their country to study abroad every year, they are engaged in the very globalisation that Mr Le Pen has sought in vain to keep out of France.

Le penury

1972 Jean-Marie Le Pen founds the National Front

1974 He stands for the French presidency but gets just 0.74 per cent of the vote

1984 The party polls 10 per cent at European elections. Le Pen wins a seat in the European Parliament

1999 Bruce Megret, Le Pen’s second-in-command, forms a breakaway group

2002 Le Pen shocks Europe by reaching the second round of the presidential elections

2007 He gains 11 per cent in the presidential election, his lowest vote since 1974

July 2008 Party’s accounts are frozen because of debts of £630,000 to the companies who printed its campaign material

Source: Times research

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