Market day, and more people are queuing to buy lottery tickets at the Café du Centre than freshly dug carrots and spinach at the farm stall. “People here watch their budgets,” says a fresh-produce seller: “They prefer to shop at the discount store.” Once, this red-brick northern town of some 3,000 people thrived on the back of a big jute-weaving and textiles factory, opened in 1857. Today, Flixecourt has a poverty rate of 19%, nearly five points above the national average. Squeezed pockets and disillusion are pushing voters to the extremes. On a recent weekend, ahead of elections on June 9th to the European Parliament, the only two candidates whose posters were visible in the town were Jordan Bardella and Marion Maréchal, rivals from the nationalist hard right.

If France is a test case for whether Europe’s political centre can hold against the forces of nationalism and populism, Flixecourt captures the dynamics shaping that choice. For over half a century voters there have entrusted their town hall to the Communist Party. These days Flixecourt is under strain, but not deserted. Traffic on its main street rumbles past two boulangeries and a Turkish kebab joint. Net curtains hang neatly in the windows of its rows of little terraced houses. The town boasts an indoor synthetic ice rink, charging €2 ($2.17) a session, and organised a recent rally for baton-twirling majorettes. A huge modern logistics warehouse by the motorway just outside the town has jobs to fill. “Unemployment is less of a problem than it used to be,” says Patrick Gaillard, the town’s Communist mayor. “Those who really want a job can find one.”