IN THE world of American dating there is something called a Coyote Moment. This occurs when you wake up the morning after the night before, look with horror at the person sleeping on your shoulder, and realise that you would rather chew off your own arm than wake them up. (Coyotes have been known to chew off their own limbs when caught in traps.)

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s French referendum on the European constitution, the likes of José Bové and Jean-Marie Le Pen will surely look at each other in the cold light of dawn and experience the Mother of all Coyote Moments.

For M Le Pen stands on the extreme Right of French politics, a veteran one-eyed former paratrooper and leader of the xenophobic, anti-immigrant National Front. At the other extreme stands the equally distinctive figure of M Bové, the left-wing anti-globalisation protester, a sheep-farmer with an Asterix moustache, best known for smashing up a McDonald’s restaurant with his tractor.

To put it mildly, these two are not natural allies: normally neither would deign to spit on the other if he were on fire. But this week, and for weeks, they have been singing the same song: a resounding “non” to the proposed EU constitution.

M Bové and M Le Pen represent opposite poles of the “no” vote, for alongside the millions of mainstream voters opposed to the constitution stand a baffling array of nay-sayers, from disgruntled farmers to trade unionists, from revolutionary Communists to ardent nationalists. An inchoate group, mutually contradictory and deeply divided, the rejectionists have nothing in common save their shared antipathy to the constitutional plan laid out by European bureaucrats and backed by the French political elite.

This week M Le Pen and M Bové held rallies on consecuctive days. M Bové whipped up the left-wing rejectionist vote in Bordeaux, accompanied by revolutionary Communists, non-revolutionary Communists, anti-globalisation protesters, feminists, trade unionists, ecologists and Trotskyites. M Le Pen served up his traditional extreme right-wing menu to 2,000 supporters in a Paris suburb. The audiences could hardly have been more different, but the fundamental message was the same: vote “no”, humiliate President Chirac, and reclaim France.

Reclaim France, that is, for very different purposes. For the hard Left, the constitution is a blueprint for rampant capitalism, the harbinger of a brutal Anglo-Saxon free market that will crush France’s cherished welfare state and trample labour rights. For the “Lepenists”, hard-bitten Eurosceptics, the threat lies in open borders, the erosion of national identity and looming Turkish membership of the EU.

But the two extremes are united in this: a fear of outsiders, whether in the shape of the Polish plumber undercutting his French counterpart or the Islamic Turk spreading an “alien” culture into France.

M Le Pen took the stage at a muncipal hall in the Paris suburb of Charenton with a blast of patriotic music and an overpowering gust of aftershave. “I am convinced the ‘no’ campaign will win,” he thundered, chin thrust out, a belligerent, myopic bulldog in a blue suit. Behind him a screen insisted: “No to a Turkish Europe.” The faithful rose and cheered: angry young men, burly military veterans in berets and women with big, bouffant hair. (According to some unexplained political equation, the further right one travels in politics, the larger the ladies’ hair.) “Le Pen, President”, they chanted, stamping in unnerving unison.

Before going on stage, Le Pen had been asked: “Don’t you feel uncomfortable in the company of Laurent Fabius?” — the Socialist former Prime Minister who has led the “no” campaign on the mainstream Left, despite his party’s support for the treaty.

“No,” he snarled, deploying the word for the first of perhaps 100 times in the course of the evening. “This is not a presidential race. We don’t have to agree with all those who vote ‘no’. We don’t have to have a combined programme. That is not the point.”

Le Pen, 77, is ageing. He has kept a low profile during this campaign, partly to avoid scaring off potential “No” voters on the Left, but also, it is said, on account of his failing health. The same bullying bluster is there — the off-colour jokes, the stage-prowling, the boxer’s stance — but it is more scripted these days. His warm-up act was his blonde daughter, Marine, who is tipped to succeed him. More liberal than her father, she still knows how to push the National Front buttons. “I have travelled a lot in Europe,” she told the audience. “England, Spain . . . Morocco.”

They knew what she meant.

Times Recommends

• Mandela’s tribe threatens President Zuma
• The French empire strikes back
• Wife of cheating governor exacts a political revenge