Sarko is France's last chance before sinking into an abyss.
Fortunately, he has a strong, steady lead in the polls, 55%-45%. The Socialists are polling at their lowest since 1969.
Posted on 05/04/2007 10:24:05 PM PDT by Cincinna
It rarely happens to a country that a clear opportunity is presented to it to save itself from ruin. Only once since the war has it happened to Britain, in 1979, when the people realised that the end of the road had been reached with the consensus that had prevailed since the Second World War, and it was time to start again on a different basis. Tomorrow, France can choose to have its 1979.
A post-war consensus similar to the one we ditched nearly 30 years ago has now prevailed in France since 1945, and after 62 years it is looking pretty threadbare. Generations of French politicians have been haunted by the memories of division, hatred and suspicion that were rife in France after the occupation, with former maquisards hating collaborators, and French society turning in on itself with recrimination and hostility.
France's post-war rulers took the view that, to heal the wounds of 1940-44, they had to govern for all the French, not merely for a particular group within France.
What that has effectively meant is that the majority of French are bought off with a lavish welfare state and jobs on the public payroll, financed by a minority who pay high taxes for the privilege of living in France. That deal, however, is almost completely broken. Business has had enough of bankrolling bureaucracy and funding feather-bedding. Well-known French individuals, such as the popular singer and actor Johnny Hallyday, have sundered their ties with the country and gone to live abroad because of the penal wealth tax, which led to Hallyday complaining that he now has to send two thirds of his annual income to the French treasury.
The decision France has to take tomorrow, when it chooses between Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal for its new president, is whether it finally has the courage to move out of the 1940s, or is determined to stay there to the point of utter economic destruction.
Ask any Frenchman or woman, and they will tell you of the three great economic difficulties facing their country: and they are all, of course, related to each other. The first is chomage, or unemployment. The second is the absence of croissance, or growth. And the third is the weakness of pouvoir d'achat, or purchasing power. What money people earn doesn't seem to go very far in France.
Wages for most workers, especially in France's enormous rural economy, are low. The bargain prices British tourists feel they have spotted when they buy food and wine, or pay for a meal in a restaurant, are quite often out of the reach of the average French family. The income tax threshold is high, and therefore only 48 per cent of those in work pay any.
By contrast, there are huge imposts on employing someone - and, once employed, staff are almost impossible to sack - which is part of the reason it is so hard for young people to get work, and why there is such high unemployment. It is also why so many dynamic young French people now choose to come to live and work in London, now the seventh biggest French city in the world.
Unlike in Britain, small businesses are not engines of growth, because bureaucracy and high taxes make it very hard for them to grow. In some parts of France the signs of decay are becoming ever more obvious: shops boarded up in villages in the Dordogne, property not selling except perhaps to foreigners, and resentment about freeloaders, especially if they are perceived to be immigrants. France has numerous successful multinationals, and every French town has scores of one-man bands (notably retailers), but there is less and less in between.
The other factor that makes it so hard for energetic and enterprising French people to prosper is that they are usually prevented by law from working more than 35 hours a week. This law, brought in under the socialist government of Lionel Jospin, is now widely condemned, even by some supporters of Miss Royal, for the effect it has had on suppressing growth, living standards, wealth creation and productivity.
That Mr Sarkozy has said that he will not only scrap it, but will make the earnings for work done in excess of the 35 hours free of taxes both for the employee and the employer, is indicative of the hand grenade he intends to throw into the dormant French economy. But will they let him?
Ever since his formal adoption as the ruling UMP party's candidate in January, Mr Sarkozy has led Miss Royal in the opinion polls. Even this week, with the final round of voting just days away, he had a lead of between four and seven per cent, depending on the poll.
Yet the Tout Sauf Sarkozy - Anything But Sarkozy - movement has been buoyant, and is relying on a transfer of votes not just from the half-dozen or so far-Left and green candidates from the first round, but also from the centrist François Bayrou. Mr Bayrou has made plain his willingness to do business with a President Royal - he has hopes, probably unfounded and politically impossible for her to fulfil, to be her prime minister - but has not directed his followers on how to vote. If they take a similarly benign view of Miss Royal, then she would probably win, and the old consensus that has caused sclerosis in France would remain.
The other problem Mr Sarkozy has is the vote - more than 10 per cent of the first round total - of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Front National leader. At a noisy rally in blazing sunshine on May Day morning outside the Paris opera, Mr Le Pen said he wanted his supporters to engage in a "massive abstention". Hardly any of them would contemplate voting for Miss Royal: many would be disposed to vote for Mr Sarkozy. Indeed, Mr Le Pen's first round vote was so low - the lowest for him since 1974 - because many former FN voters felt Mr Sarkozy's programme had enough in it on immigration, law and order and taxation to command their support in the first round.
Reaction to Mr Le Pen's abstention call has been largely negative, but some of his most ardent followers - stung by Mr Sarkozy's labelling of them as extremists - may well do what he tells them. If too many do, they could well be handing the election to Miss Royal.
This would be awful for France, which badly needs even the mild dose of liberal economics and reduction in the size of the state that Mr Sarkozy is promising. The present situation, where 52 per cent of France's GDP is spent in the public sector (against 42 per cent of ours, which itself is too high) is unsustainable. It might well provide an opportunity in 2012 for the FN, who might feed on the greater social and economic problems that a hard five years of corrosive, introspective, un-radical and profligate Left-wing government would bring. But the state France would be in by then, even further detached from economic realities that are now commonplace for the rest of Europe, hardly bears thinking about.
If the polls, however, are right, and Mr Sarkozy wins tomorrow, then a different sort of story will begin. The trades unions, who still carry a weight in France disproportionate to their size, are more or less pledged to confront him. He, for his part, is pledged to sit down and talk to them if he is elected, but that is not going to be in the nature of a negotiation: it is more likely to be his telling them what has to change. France's employment laws are absurdly weighted towards the worker, and Mr Sarkozy knows he has to bring more flexibility into the labour market if France is to prosper. When the present French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, tried to do this a year ago, there were riots.
Some on the Left positively want a violent and extra-parliamentary confrontation with Mr Sarkozy. A group of socialist intellectuals wrote in Liberation earlier this week of the impending civil war if he is elected tomorrow. For all the hyperbole, it is certainly true that Mr Sarkozy has few admirers among those who are most likely to go to the barricades in a country where that still seems an acceptable way of solving disputes. Students, public sector workers, trades unionists and the immigrants of the banlieue - whom Mr Sarkozy has variously branded voyous (yobbos) and racaille (rabble, or scum) all feel targeted by him, and could well try to flex some muscle.
Yet those close to Mr Sarkozy say he will press on with liberalising economic reforms and, noting the success of foreign governments that have had to bring in change, will seek to do it quickly. This could well mean a summer of unrest in France. But as the alternative would appear to be France being left further and further behind the rest of the developed world, perhaps a fight now is preferable to complete ruin later. By tomorrow night we shall know how brave the French are prepared to be.
Fortunately, he has a strong, steady lead in the polls, 55%-45%. The Socialists are polling at their lowest since 1969.
An excellent analysis of the issues facing French voters as they go to the polls on Sunday.
FReepMail if you would like to be on the FRENCH ELECTION PING LIST.
For some reason, this election has casued France Gall’s “Sacré Charlemagne” to play in my head.
I haven’t heard much about France Gall in a very long time. She has had some terrible tragedies in the last 15 years. First the death of Michel Berger at age 44, then the death of her daughter, then a bout with cancer.
Any news?
The last that I heard, she is still with us and okay.
The loss of her daughter (1997) was very tragic because she was only 19. It is amazing how someone with so much talent can suffer so many hardships.
Even though she became popular many years before I was born, I really enjoy a lot of her work (especially her songs from the 1960s and 1970s). Chantal Goya is another good singer from the 1960s.
One of my current favourites is Emilie Simon.
Well, I am eager to see how the election unfolds. I am hoping for the best for France in this.
Wait until Sarko tries to enact any kind of “reform”. The French youts will riot non-stop until the country is in ruins. For once, I’d enjoy seeing the left exposed as the violent, childish, totalitarians they are.
Glad to hear that France Gall is well. What a tragic life after her husbands death at 44 and the tragic events that followed.
I have always loved Chantal Goya, as a child, and to this day. Still the greatest songs for kids.
My all time favorites are still Piaf, Montand, Becaud, Trenet and Aznavour. I was so fortunate this year to see Aznavour live in concert here in NY at Radio City Music Hall. He was fantastic.
I agree completely - Piaf est trés formidable. I also like many of Bardot’s songs.
This is why I love FR. A thread on the French election turns into a discussion of French music.
Brilliant!
Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel - French geniuses. I love listening to and playing them. Even Chopin and Liszt were heavily affected by the rich and romantic Parisian environs as can be heard (for example) in many of Chopin’s waltzes. France, with all her eccentricities holds a special place in the development of the arts and high culture.
"THIS full of crap. Seriously. Like I was a giant, ambulatory duodenum with legs, or something."
French society turning in on itself with recrimination and hostility.Isn't that the basis for Royal's campaign? :')
This is an excellent article... I was just about to start a thread with it but found you had already found it. Thanks.
This seems to be a really good analysis... not only of the situation facing France, but the situation that is slowly developing, I fear, in the US.
If we can’t stop the creep of socialism in the US soon, we’re going to find ourselves in the same place in ten or so years -— with work devalued so much that it leisure completely dominates our thoughts and desires, and where cradle-to-grave care by our government is expected.
Simon Heffer does good work. He’s sort of a Brit cross between Ann Coulter and Mark Steyn, if you domesticated Ann’s hair-on-fire style and Mark’s ineffable word crafting.
There’s hope for France. Socialism is a disaster!
How is Sarkozy on immigration?
If the French don’t put strict limits on future Muslim immigration, plus start having more children of their own, then their (along with the rest of Europe) long-term prospects are very bleak even if Sarkozy implements much needed economic reforms.
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