The Anything-But-Sarkos

There are only two types of elections that generate any excitement in France — presidential elections, and municipal elections.  June 7th will be neither of those.  That’s when French voters will decide on whom they want to represent them in the European parliament, and turnout is expected to hit a record low.

Martine Aubry. Photo by manuel | MC.

So it’s not surprising that the French media is taking its cue from insular French voters and treating the election as yet another political horse race, assigning handicaps and picking their favorites.  This time round, it’s the Socialist party who is drawing the worst odds.   Headed by Martine Aubry — the lady whose name is on the law that created the 35-hour workweek — the socialists are tracking five points behind the ruling UMP party, with a dismal 22% in recent polls. If this result holds, it will be a stunning reversal of their strong showing in the municipal elections last year. France’s lead opposition party is indeed in disarray.  Yet it is European elections, in particular, that have a way of bedeviling the socialists.

If Ms. Aubry’s party scores anything below 20% of the vote, it will confirm suspicions that she is at the helm of a fractured party, the leadership of which she barely secured in her bruising and narrow victory over former presidential candidate Segolène Royale.  As you would expect, the symbolism of the European vote is not lost on Aubry, who has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to turn the European election into a referendum on Nicolas Sarkozy’s unpopular presidency. Her main slogan has been, “stop Sarkozy and Barroso,” or rather it was, until the latter’s name was quietly dropped.  (Most French voters aren’t familiar with European Commission president José Manuel Barroso.)

Historian Gil Mihaely believes the socialist party has jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Sarko sentiment because right now, for whatever reason, the only viable politics in France is “anti” politics—anti-capitalist, anti-Sarkozy.  “This is the politics of rejection,” argues Mr. Mihaely, co-founder of Causeur magazine.  The political expression of ‘j’en ai marre’ [I’ve had it!]. And it’s very adolescent.”

Indeed, “Stop Barroso” hardly qualifies as a position at all; it’s more like a protest.   And whenever an opposition party starts acting like a protest party, it’s often because they are trying to run away from a lack of policies.  After all, France has no shortage of protest parties already, like Olivier Besancenot’s New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), or the National Front headed by racist demagogue Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Segolène Royale. Photo by Guillaume Paummier.

Perhaps it is the socialist leadership’s hope that anti-Sarko furor can paper over their own deep internal division over the question of Europe, a disagreement which burst into the open when former prime minister and socialist grandee Laurent Fabius came out against his own party by campaigning against the European constitutional referendum in 2005. This has left the nominally pro-European party ideologically adrift, with an anodyne European stance (which seems designed not to anger its instinctively protectionist trade union wing.)

In the wake of Ms. Royale’s electoral drubbing by Sarkozy two years ago, venerated left wing journal Libération called on the Socialists to modernize in the manner of Britain’s New Labour.  The editorial was titled simply “Change or Die.”

New Labour was built through meticulous observation of the benefits and faults of Thatcherism. La nouvelle gauche would be well advised to do the same with Sarkozysme, to find the power to dethrone it, rather than engaging in the not only futile but quite simply suicidal politics of demonization.

It’s clear the call was not heeded.  No real debate has been held within the party over the future of Europe, or globalization, or how to capitalize on the crisis in Neo-liberal thought in the wake in the global market meltdown. The senior leadership has busied itself in internecine fighting for control of the party.  Come June 7th, we’ll see if this missed opportunity makes for electoral embarrassment.