Today, France goes to the polls in the first of two ballots to select its next President; polls suggest that incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy and socialist Francois Hollande will go head to head in the run-off on Sunday 8 May.
The Presidental election and subsequent legislative elections are a real challenge for Liberals. Our sister party, the Mouvement Democrate (MoDem) led by Francois Bayrou has struggled during this campaign. Bayrou, a popular former Education Minister, has lost momentum in an environment where populism and a breathtaking level of denial has characterized the debate.
‘Bling Bling’ Sarkozy has become a deeply unpopular figure due to his penchant for extravagant behaviours in office. Banging the populist drum, he set out his political stall for the upcoming campaign to Le Figaro magazine at the beginning of February. His priorities, he explained, included opposing gay marriage and adoption as well as euthanasia. This was not a President ready to face up to the heavy responsibilities of economic reform.
Francois Hollande, his Socialist opponent has done little more to address coherently the economic challenges for France. His centerpiece policy of creating 60,000 new teaching jobs in the education system and hints that he would reduce the retirement age from 62 to 60 defy the era of austerity.
Marine Le Pen’s attempts to ‘modernise’ the Front National have been proven hollow. Her decision to attend a ball in Vienna organized by the Austrian far right on the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was disgraceful; she has reverted to type.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far left Front de Gauche has been brazen, wrapping himself in the flag of the French revolution, calling for a citizens’ insurrection and a renegotiation of EU treaties. Surging in the polls, Mélenchon looks set to come third in today’s election.
For Liberals in France, this has been a desperate contest where the big issue of the day, the economy, has been ignored. Bayrou has faced a tough fight. Bluff, like our own Vince Cable, he has been unique in talking of the need for deep cuts. The Economist observed Bayrou was the only candidate focusing his campaign on the real issues on which the future of France depends. Yet, his message, and campaign, doesn’t appear to have resonated with the electorate.
With the prospect of losing in today’s first round vote, Bayrou will be focusing on bolstering MoDem’s future in the realignment of the political landscape in the wake of a Sarkozy defeat. This will present an opportunity to build the liberal centre.
Whatever the outcome for MoDem and French Liberalism today and in the legislative elections in June, the electorate will surely remember that it was Bayrou – and only he – who spoke of the hard decisions that France now faces. Liberals rarely shirk from hard realities, and that will serve our French friends well in the long term.
* Andrew Wigley is a public affairs professional who has lived and worked in the US and the Middle East. He began his career working for the Liberal Democrats, first in London and then Brussels. He previously managed community and public affairs for an oil company with facilities near In Amenas.
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8 Comments
I like Bayrou a lot, I liked him when he stood last time, sorry he didn’t do better then and glad to see he’s still going. However, isn’t he more of a Christian Democrat than a Liberal, particularly in continental terms?
“Whatever the outcome for MoDem and French Liberalism today and in the legislative elections in June, the electorate will surely remember that it was Bayrou – and only he – who spoke of the hard decisions that France now faces”
Is this a joke? Bayrou has been rubbish in this campaign, failing to craft out a coherent and distinctive space and struggling in the polls as a result
The French Presidential elections are a salutory reminder that politics in advanced economies nevertheless remains primarily about left versus right
First results at 7pm:
Hollande 28%
Sarkozy 25%
Le Pen 20%
Melenchon 12%
Strong showing by the extremists
The publication of this article was badly timed. The big story now is the success of Marine Le Pen, which of course is a dreadful outcome.
As far as the comments about austerity is concerned I think it is clear that in many EU countries austerity is failing to produce the growth needed to pay off the deficit. The problem Hollande will have will be implementing a stimulus in France when most EU countries are doing the opposite. However I hope if Hollande gets elected he will challenge the EU consensus which is getting nowhere.
And now hot on the heels of the 20% that the National Front got in France, we’ve got a general election in The Netherlands that has been triggered by the fiscal compact.
Geert Wilders has withdrawn his far-right party from the coalition governement saying that he cannot tolerate the cuts being demanded by Brussels : “We don’t want to make our retirees bleed for Brussels’ diktats”.
In an age when Brussels demands that we abandon Keynes and engage in the economically suicidal policies of austerity/deflation/depression (simultaneously demanding huge budget increases for themselves) we will surely find that electorates become more open to the simplistic, strident messages of the far right.
And yet all I hear from the senior leadership of The Party is shattering silence. I distinctly recall Vince Cable talking during the general election about how you can’t take a patient off the drip when he’s still critically ill. I still think that’s an good simile. Why was it right in April 2010 but wrong in April 2012?
Sometimes it’s better to let people die with dignity and let the next generation take over rather than fill the hospital with people on perpetual life support. Indeed the EU bailouts fit rather nicely into Paul’s metaphor. The austerity is only happening because of the pursuit of a Keynesian idea: that the ECB and governments can and should use debt or quantitative easing to boost the collapsing demand for sovereign bonds as they turn bad in Greece and Italy. This Europe-wide stimulus package is being directed at banks and sovereign bond-holders, who should have been left to face the consequences of their poor investment decisions when their debtors defaulted. Instead we see a sluggishness in the European economy that reflects a poor allocation of resources focused on boosting aggregate demand for, well, Greek and Italian government credit notes, preventing them from facing up to the reality that they’re broke and will face austerity eventually. And the longer it’s put off the more they’ll waste resources that would otherwise be co-ordinated towards those who actually need support.
@ Paul – “Geert Wilders has withdrawn his far-right party from the coalition governement”
Far-right, really?
I believe it is far more appropriate to term his party what it actually is; populist right, and far more conducive to useful and precise debate.
Thank you all for the feedback.
Geoffrey, you’re right to remind us that the story has moved on (I should add this article was penned and submitted Thursday – events have developed). The rise of the Front National is a story not dissimilar to the rise of the far right in some Nordic countries, the Netherlands and Central Europe, but I think it’d be fair to say that in France this has been a longer, slower, more sustained burn.
Clempalme you’re spot on to say Bayrou’s campaign was rubbish – I didn’t say otherwise. But it’s fair and accurate to observe he was more honest about the economic challenge than the other candidates. Even The Economist which can be a bit sniffy about praising politicians gave him recognition for that, and certainly at the beginning of the campaign expectations were high and polling suggested he could have displaced Sarkozy in the run-off. It wasn’t to be and he has failed to adequately capture the protest.
Matthew, yes, you’re quite right to question to what extent MoDem may be described
Liberal party; its provenance is anchored in the centre right but it remains the only home currently for Liberals in France.
As the results confirm almost one fifth of the population voted Front National, a couple of significant points emerge:
First, FN’s record votes suggest people sought a home for their vote away from the Socialists or Centre Right. Should we assume that all those voters were drawn only by that Party’s policies on immigration and race? Probably not. For some, there will be, no doubt, a measure of protest in the decision to vote FN, and to find an alternative to Sarkozy or the Socialists. The disappointment has to be that Bayrou’s campaign failed to attract those votes.
And unlike MoDem, my impression is that the FN have had a sustained campaign running for some time. Having lived for the past year in leafy, liberal middle class Aix-en-Provence, FN leafleters have been assiduously handing out their campaign literature almost every week at the saturday markets over the past three months. Only the Socialists were also visible.
Second, if Sarkozy is defeated, we should anticipate a realignment of the centre and centre right. How Bayrou or MoDem comes out of that remains to be seen, but it will be a critical moment for the fortunes of that party.