Paris, June 19, 2007 – The salient conclusions that can now be drawn from the French presidential and legislative elections are the following:

That there really is a new right in France, and the party legacy of Gaullism is closed. The character of this new right has yet to be revealed.

The Socialist party has come back from initial defeat to form a viable parliamentary opposition.

The Socialists are nonetheless in a profound and compounded crisis, composed of ideological division, personal rivalries, and the problem created by the private relations of its two most important leaders, Ségolène Royal and François Holland.

The Communist party and the National Front have lost all importance.

As generally known to those interested, France’s legislative elections concluded Sunday with a sharp drop in the overwhelming majorities initially won by Nicolas Sarkozy and his party in both the presidential election and the first round of the election of a new National Assembly. They nonetheless are left with a large and controlling majority in the parliament. The Socialists, badly defeated in the initial legislative vote, came back strongly enough to form an effective parliamentary opposition. They won 207 seats, the Communists 15; and Sarkozy’s party and its allies won 325 in a total assembly of 577 members. There are two centrist groups with a total of 26 seats.



There now really is a powerful new right in France. The Gaullist tradition, which was never rightist or pro-capitalist, but a combination of economic dirigisme, social welfare policy, and defense of national identity, sovereignty, and autonomy of choice against all comers, is now history. The last of the Gaullists are gone from French politics.

The character of the new right that has taken its place has yet to be discovered. Contrary to many foreign comments, it has little to do with Thatcherism, Reaganism, ‘Gingrichism,’ or Bushism. Nor is it some version of Blairism.

It will have a new dynamism under Sarkozy, which thus far has proven popular and even contagious elsewhere in Europe. One of Sarkozy’s first acts was a visit to Brussels where he declared that there must be no more EU agricultural trade concessions to the United States. It will surprise no observer of France that economic policy seems certain to remain essentially Colbertian in character, as French economic policy has been not only since Colbert but probably since Charles Martel in the Eighth Century.

The Socialist Party, which seemed a spectacular ruin after the first round of the legislative vote, now has quaffed a large glass of rejuvenation tonic (thanks in part to a government gaff between the first and second National Assembly votes, suggesting that value added tax on consumer goods might be put up to 25%). That seems to have driven to the left virtually every vote from centrists, previously inclined to go along with Sarkorzy, as well as handing the Socialists most of the seats contested between Socialist and Sarkozyist candidates. A member of the government has bitterly commented that the tax remark lost the majority 60 seats.

Even the Communist Party, which had seemed that of the walking dead, managed to elect 18 deputies. (Once it was the largest party in France.) The National Front was wiped out, even Jean-Marie Le Pen’s personable blonde daughter – campaigning as the human face of Le Penism – lost in the second round.

The Socialists nonetheless have been reduced to a divided and quarrelling condition resembling that from which François Mitterrand rescued them by creating a united front with the Communists in the 1970s. They are in poor condition to challenge the right in local elections next year, not to speak of fighting the next national contest.

The Socialists used to quarrel over whether to make a social-democratic accommodation to the center or cling to the union of the Left idea of allying the party with several small and romantically-conceived quasi-Marxist, quasi-Trotskyist, quasi-anarchist, and quasi-revolutionary currents, plus the Communists (in the days when the Communists had not yet been zombized).

Now that is behind them. The struggle has become one between a social democratic current, including figures with ministerial experience in previous governments, the residual advocates (mainly for tactical reasons) of a united left policy, and the most important single force in the party, the followers of Ségolène Royal, who even while losing the election won 17 million presidential votes in May, more than any Socialist presidential candidate since Mitterrand. She has a passionately committed following of young and mostly new Socialist militants. She has announced that she is a candidate for the leadership of the party.

In this, domestic drama is crucially implicated. After much rumor, gossip by people in the know, and indirect allusion, plus two breathless new books, Royal has made it known that while she had deliberately avoided the subject during the campaign, for the sake of her children and because it would not have been politically appropriate to do otherwise, she has asked her companion and the father of her children, François Holland, secretary general of the Socialists, to pack his bags, leave home (which he presumably has done some time ago) and “pursue his sentimental life elsewhere, on his own.” He has confirmed this. He has also said that his term as leader of the Socialists does not end until next year, and that he currently has much to do to pull the party together to fight anew.

Well! As Stan Laurel used to say to Oliver Hardy: “A fine mess!” -- one which most Socialists no doubt feel that they don’t really need at this turning-point.

The final thing to be said to an international readership is that this election has been a stunning democratic accomplishment by a thoroughly and passionately mobilized electorate, with real issues and policy alternatives challenged, serious debates, near-total participation in the crucial votes, no cheapness, fired by political ideas and not by business, industrial or sectoral interest lobbies, since no paid television advertising or campaigning is allowed in France, equal broadcasting time granted even to the minor candidates, campaign funding largely provided from public sources, and serious media coverage. It was not something that today’s Americans are likely ever to experience.
© 2007 Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.