At the weekend the Sunday
Times gave a whole broadsheet page to French politics. Six columns were
dedicated to a sneering report on Francois Hollande, to the effect that the
socialist president’s popularity was in freefall and the nation could be soon seeking
bailouts. The other column went to French tycoon Arnaud Lagardère who
apparently has a fiancée much taller than him. It comes as no surprise then
that the once most respected of British newspapers is today part of the Murdoch
stable.
However the real story of political
interest on Sunday wasn’t at the Elysée Palace or indeed at Chez Lagardère but
at the election count for the next leader of France’s Conservative opposition
party the UMP – Union pour un Mouvement Populaire. The BBC correspondent in
Paris, Hugh Schofield, in his report described events thus: “Watching the
results come in was like seeing a really crummy disaster movie. The events were
terrible, but it was so bad you just wanted to laugh.” It is his turn of phrase
that makes up this article’s headline.
First a bit of history. In Britain all our
main three political parties are to say the least well established. The
Conservative Party was formed in 1834 but traces its roots to the Tory Party
which started in 1678. The Liberals grew out of the Whigs in 1859. Even the new
kids on the block, the Labour Party, was formed in 1900.
In contrast in France whilst it has long
established socialist and communist parties the groupings on the right change
with the wind. I am old enough to remember De Gaulle’s splendidly named
Rassemblement du peuple francais. He formed that party in 1947 but by the time
he left politics in 1970 he had lead three different parties of the right: all
anti socialist and communist. So when we talk of the fight to lead the UMP, the
party of Chirac and then Sarkozy, we are speaking of one that is just a decade
old.
The reason this election to choose the new
leader of the UMP created such headlines is both candidates claimed victory a
day before the final result was declared and then accused their rival of fraud
and ballot-stuffing. The right-wing candidate Jean-Francois Cope finally came
in ahead of former Prime Minister Francois Fillon by just 98 votes and the UMP
has been badly damaged by the fiasco.
I asked Pierre Kanuty who is in charge of
European and international relations at the Parti Socialiste in Paris for the
left’s take on these events. Pierre also started with the historical context.
He told me: “One needs to understand that as a matter of fact,
there has never been a true conservative party in France though we have a
strong right wing party. All of them have been presidential organisations
dedicated to ensure networks aimed at one man’s victory.
“In the
1960’s and 1970’s, Gaullist MP’s needed a political frame for campaigning so
they created the UNR (Union for a New Republic), followed by the Union of
democrats for the Republic.
“In 1976,
Jacques Chirac organised his party, the RPR (Gathering for the Republic). His
first success was to be elected as mayor of Paris. The rest of the history is
well know, the RPR used municipal jobs to have manpower for the party and got
money from many companies to fund the party and its campaign. They also cheated
many times on local votes in Paris.
“The following year Valery Giscard d’Estaing,
President of the Republic at the time formed his own party, UDF (Union of the
French democracy).
“Chirac’s RPR was depicted by its founder as the
“French social democracy” supposed to be more leftist than the UDF. The truth there
was always a conservative – neo liberal wing and a centrist, pro-welfare state
fighting each other within the RPR and the UDF.
“The rise of a successful conservative revolution in
the UK with Thatcher and in the US with Reagan gave them hope, but the electoral
cost was very high as the French conservative voters still wanted a strong
state even if they were in favour of strong tax cuts.
“The crisis of the conservative leadership is a very
long story, but as long as the parties were dominated by high figures like
Chirac, or Sarkozy, it was easy to reduce it to childish games.
“In 2001, the RPR decided to merge with centre right
UDF to form the UMP. Some of people from UDF refused to join, claiming there
was room for a true centre party that eventually became the MoDem led by
François Bayrou.
“Nicolas Sarkozy took over the party and he organised
it as a war machine entirely aimed at the 2007 victory. Renewal of ideas,
networks, activists, communication and media strategy, nothing was left behind.
But the main thing was to assume a true neo liberal and neo conservative
ideology.”
With the
defeat of Sarkozy in May by Hollande and the defeated president’s subsequent
resignation from the party leadership obviously the UMP had to seek a new
leader. All parties after defeat lick their wounds, rally round a new leader
and move on. What went so disastrously wrong for the UMP?
Pierre explained: “As long as Sarkozy was President,
he was also the true leader of the Conservative Party, and obviously when he
left, his succession had to be secured. But it is a tradition in the right, no
heir, no successor. Conservative leaders like Jean-François Copé were too busy
thinking about their own career, focusing on 2017 the year of the next
presidential elections.
“François Fillon, former prime minister comes from a
social conservative background, but as Sarkozy’s Prime minister, for five
years, he implemented a neo liberal policy and, even if he ended his term with
a better popularity rate that Sarkozy, he was symbolically defeated since his
old constituency was won by a socialist candidate, Stéphane Le Foll who became
minister of agriculture. Fillon decided to target an easier place to be elected
in the “bourgeois” Paris’s 7th district and Quartier Latin as a first step for
a further fight : being mayor of Paris in 2014.
“Jean-François Copé never left his home town, in a
Paris suburb. With his “uninhibited right” he’s ready to do whatever it takes
to grab the extreme right National Front’s voters.
“The vote of 18th November was a opportunity for UMP
members to choose for the first time their leader without any electoral
pressure as we are only six months after the presidential and legislative
elections. The rules of procedures were very hard. Each candidate had to be
endorsed by almost 8,000 party members representing 10 local branches at
department level. The 265,000 party members could vote in 650 polling stations.
Only 176,000 persons voted.
“The socialists with less party members (around 150,000)
had more than 3,000 polling stations in their vote on the leadership one month
earlier. This is one of the reasons of the mess.
“The means never matched the needs. Copé finally won
with only 50,03 %, just 98 votes ahead.
“Such a small margin requires a huge effort to bring
legitimacy to the new leader. If there is no surprise in Copé’s victory, it
shows that the leadership crisis is not over yet since somebody can argue that
the “minority” represents 49.97 % of the party.”
I leave the
final word on this debacle to Pierre:
“In the 1980’s, there was a slogan saying “the French
right is the dumbest in the world”. Seems it is still accurate.”
(The above
article was published in the London Progressive Journal on November 20 2012).
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