Defeated Socialists search for scapegoats
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bf138202-fbf...b5df10621.html
Let the finger-pointing begin. Ségolène Royal’s defeat on Sunday night left the French Socialist party in disarray and searching for someone to blame. There is hardly a shortage of scapegoats.
It is the party’s third consecutive presidential defeat. The Socialists now face the question of whether they can ever regain power without ditching their anti-capitalist rhetoric, as the mainstream left has done across almost all of Europe.
Ms Royal can argue that she did better than Lionel Jospin, who in 2002 led the Socialists to a humiliating third place behind Jacques Chirac and far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. But France’s main opposition party still faces a wrenching crisis.
”The left is not credible on so many issues, from the 35-hour working week to immigration and law and order,” says Dominique Reynié, professor at Sciences Po university.
“It is the fault of the left collectively. Ever since their [parliamentary election] defeat in 1983 they have never questioned their fundamental ideology, only thinking they needed to change tactics,” he says.
In many ways, Ms Royal, the Senegal-born daughter of an army colonel, seemed to be the tactical masterstroke that could restore the Socialist party to winning ways.
Young and moderate voters were drawn by her Blairist ideas and taste for smashing party taboos on the 35-hour week and young offenders. By embracing the internet to invent a new participative style of campaigning, the glamorous 53-year-old seemed to be breaking the political mould, becoming the first woman with a shot at the Elysée palace.
But Ms Royal failed to capitalise on the buzz around her euphoric victory in November’s Socialist primary, when she was seen as the “gazelle” beating more experienced “elephants” for the presidential nomination. The fierce primary battle, however, left the “elephants” feeling jealous and reluctant to rally behind her.
In the months that followed she lost momentum, committing several gaffes, notably on foreign and economic policy, which sowed the seeds of doubt about her “presidential stature”.
Her campaign was shambolic. There were many last-minute agenda changes and she often arrived late. Socialist staff moaned about her personalised leadership style. An opinion poll found that 63 per cent of voters thought her campaign was poor.
She never seemed able to escape from her party’s rigid ideological barriers. Every time she tried, for instance by suggesting military camps for young offenders, it provoked a volley of criticism from the party apparat.
Moderates attracted to her early campaign were disappointed by her manifesto, filled with generous spending pledges and little indication of how to fund them.
Party disunity exploded into public view when Eric Besson, her economic adviser, quit saying she was “dangerous for France” and joined the Sarkozy campaign.
François Bayrou, the centrist who came third in the first round, cited her economic policies as his reason for not endorsing Ms Royal. “Her manifesto, multiplying the interventions of the state, perpetuating the illusion that the state must take care of everything… runs in the opposite direction to the orientation needed,” he said.
The awkward role of François Hollande, her party leader and father of her four children, seemed to backfire. He claimed she would raise taxes – forcing her to deny it – and she suspended a spokesman for saying Mr Hollande was “her only flaw”.
Ms Royal has always kept her distance from her party. She will remain head of the Poitou-Charentes region and many expect her to retreat to her rural base in western France to wait for the party battles to calm as she mulls a 2012 presidential bid.
Commentators predict the party could now be torn in two, along the lines of the split in the 2005 European referendum, when a large minority rebelled against the official party line and campaigned for a No vote.
”Her defeat will be extremely damaging for the left. Huge divisions will start to emerge at 8pm on Sunday,” says Eric Dupin, author of A Droite Toute, a book on the rightward shift of French voters.
Jean-Marie Colombani, director of Le Monde newspaper, says: “Globalisation is still considered a threat and diabolised as the root of all evil. The left must get out of the ideological impasse in which it has been trapped for too long.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
