The outcome of the UK general elections will be decisive not only for the people living in this country but also for the rest of Europe, where the Labour government is a major player and stands out as an exception in a political landscape dominated by the Right. With a Tory government in charge, the European Left could find itself almost voiceless.
Turning one’s attention to smaller signals coming from other Left parties in Europe may help building up some positive momentum. In this regard, the results of the regional elections held in Italy in March are disappointing. Berlusconi’s coalition succeeded in winning 2 new regions out of 13 and the Democratic Party, clearly in a deadlock, has failed to oppose the corrupt Italian regime. In France, however, the French Socialist Party (PS) performed well in the regional elections organised on 14 and 21 March 2010 and is now back on track to lead the movement preparing for the next presidential elections in 2012. There are good reasons to be pleased, although the PS’s ability to capitalise on its recent success will depend on how it rises to the considerable challenges listed in this paper.
Reasons to be pleased in 2010
In France, the united Right, federated under the patronage of the hyper-president Nicolas Sarkozy, suffered a historic defeat – the worst governmental score since 1958. Unity didn’t win the day for the Right as the President’s game plan to attract voters from a range going from the centre-right to the National Front failed. Conversely, thanks to an effective coalition with the greens, the PS could find itself in charge of running no fewer than 21 out of the 22 regions that make up metropolitan France. The share of the vote won by all the parties of the Left rose from 45% in 2004 to over 53% now. The PS alone accounted for nearly 30%, a very high score given the fragmented nature of the French political spectrum. The regions are significant players in a country where decentralisation has been far more developed in recent decades that in the UK. Their assemblies enjoy wide-ranging powers in areas such as economic development, transport infrastructure, vocational training and secondary education. They thus represent real centres of influence at the local level.
The PS has other reasons to be pleased. When, at the previous regional elections in 2004, conservative regions fell one by one to the PS and its allies and the party won a landslide (gaining 20 regions then), it was seen as a bit of a fluke, the product of a particular set of circumstances. But in the event, the PS maintained itself and demonstrated that it has the capacity to remain successful and well-entrenched far beyond its traditional bastions in south-western and northern France. The audacious work carried out by the socialist presidents in regional assemblies has paid off, in line with the slow but steady progression of the Left at other levels of local government: 58 out of 100 départements and 149 out of 262 councils of municipalities with more than 30,000 inhabitants are now controlled by the Left.
Credit is also due to the PS for having wormed its way out of a political hole following the last presidential election. Ségolène Royal, the eventual PS candidate, went on to lose the contest against Sarkozy in June 2007, and the Party sank into a recriminatory morass. The 2008 PS conference was an unmitigated disaster and revealed in full light the party’s latent factionalism. Martine Aubry was elected Party leader, but by a minuscule margin and dogged by accusations of fraud. She initially struggled to assert her authority amid continuing infighting and last year, the Socialists performed poorly in the European elections. Since then, the PS has started to discipline itself into being a more effective opposition at national level and a viable fighting force in the regions.
The PS’s success has been largely helped by the unpopularity of the government and crucially by Sarkozy’s grating political style and strategic misjudgements, which shaped the “Sarko-no” vote. The President’s grand design since taking over the reins of the neo-Gaullist UMP from his predecessor Jacques Chirac had been to create a single hegemonic political movement on the mainstream Right, with sufficient critical mass to be the prominent actor on the French political stage. The liberal UDF and other smaller parties were effectively absorbed in the UMP, or pressed in service as auxiliaries to the presidential project. In the context of a classic two-round election, the enlarged UMP showed how vulnerable it was, having virtually no potential allies to call upon in the second round – whereas the PS could count on the reserves provided by its partners.
As for the political centre, represented by the Democratic Movement (MoDem), its capacity to play a meaningful role has been undermined following its disastrous showing in March, when a majority of MoDem urban electors transferred their vote to the ecologists.
How not to win in 2012
So does this suggest that all is well, and that the Left is cruising to victory in the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections? Far from it, as the PS is now facing up to a series of difficult challenges:
• Internal divisions and local forces: In the past, the PS has amply demonstrated its capacity to shoot itself in the foot. Its success at the 2004 regional elections was followed by defeat at a national level in 2007. The next year and a half will see the enacting of the complicated process to select a candidate for the presidential election, possibly founded on Italian-style primaries open to supporters of the Left and not just, as in the past, to paid-up PS members. During this time, the PS’s internal divisions, -which are based more on competing personalities than on differences in doctrine-, are bound to resurface, and could keep interfering in a disruptive way should the next party’s conference be organised after the primaries. The party’s capacity to find enough resources to pull itself out if this tiresome process once the candidate is selected will be a determinant factor in the run up to the election. Furthermore, the PS’s strength is rooted in its local and regional fiefdoms, whose leaders display creativity in implementing enterprising social and environmental measures and nurture their geographical power bases. So far the PS has been unable to translate this into a momentum at a national level. In this respect French Socialism amounts to less than the sum of its parts.
• Divided coalition: Electoral success for the PS is also dependent on effective management of its relations with other parties. With its large share of the vote in March, the PS is theoretically in a good position: strong enough to claim a leadership role, but not overwhelmingly so in a way that might cause resentment among its partners. Nevertheless, the Left is far from united. The Greens of the “Europe-Ecologie” (EE) movement, who constitute the second largest component at around 12%, have a powerful wind in their sails and will drive hard bargains. According to some commentators, whose views seem to be confirmed by the actual seat allocation in the regional assemblies, EE is the real winner of the last ballot. But is a pink-green coalition a viable option for the PS? For the moment, leaders on both sides have showed signs of willingness to share a common platform of ideas in order to green up the political agenda. Should the Greens become less fractious and more predictable, and agree to adopt more socially-oriented and economically-sustainable policies, they would represent a heavyweight partner for the PS. The Left Front (FG), which includes the Communists, lost many seats in March, confirming the gradual disappearance of communism in France. The FG is therefore more dependent than ever on the PS to retain what remains of its pool of elected representatives. Finally, relations with the trotskyite far Left (now marginal, but with a potential to reach over 5%) are unsurprisingly bad. It will require much skill and patience to marshal all these forces, if not into an alliance, at least into some sort of broad front in 2012.
• Abstention: At under 47%, turnout in the regional elections was low, much more so than six years ago (participation in March decreased by 15 points, the equivalent of 6 million votes). On that basis, the Left vote as a proportion of registered electors, rather than voters, actually dropped slightly. Arguably, the result of an election where less than half of the electorate bothered to vote is not a good indicator of what might happen in national contests, where turnout is higher. But abstention will be a clincher in the 2012 elections, the 80% participation rate in the 2007 presidential election being an exception in the long-term and steady trend of turnout erosion. Worryingly, low turnouts, as in the UK, suggest disenchantment with the political process as much as policies’ disapproval. Research show that the poorer and ghettoised banlieues, where turnout in March was as low as 20%, are the least likely to vote. This trend, which particularly penalises the Left, is disturbing for those who wish to see the under-privileged have a greater stake in the political process. The PS, whose electorate is increasingly made up of middle and upper middle-class urbanised voters, will have no chance of winning the next elections if it does not urgently implement an active strategy of reaching out young people and working class communities in poor suburbs and remote areas.
• Extreme Right: Finally, on the far Right, there is the nagging and persistent refusal of the National Front (FN) to go away, in spite of showing signs of flagging in the last European elections. With the economic and social crisis in the background, the FN obtained over 11% of the vote in March, with particularly high scores in its heartlands in the north and south-east. FN electors, temporarily tempted by the government’s insidious populism and xenophobic interventions, appear to have returned to their political home. The UMP’s strategy of flirting with extreme right voters became overt in early 2010 when the minister for immigration attempted to organise an official debate on national identity across the country. This strategy may have backfired for the presidential Right: instead it drew voters to the FN, and kept draining away a working-class electorate that ought to form part of the natural constituency for parties of the Left.
It looks as if “Jean-Marie” and “Danny” (Jean-Marie Le Pen, the aging FN leader, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, one of the leaders of EE) are likely to play a big arbitrating role in the next elections. But more generally, putting politics back into the heart of the cité with a political programme that is both distinctive and persuasive in the context of a difficult economic environment will be the real challenge for the PS. In French politics, two years can be a very long time indeed, but time goes quicker when there is hope, and with some strong friends to walk along with.
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Down here in Languedoc the FN have a worryingly large vote but at least PS/Green won. As of last year we even have a PS mayor in Vias for the first time.
These comments could apply here in perfidious Albion. The low turn out should not deflect from the triumph of the PS. Aubry has, seemingly against all the odds and an unsympathetic meejer, done a good enough job. Sarky has already panicked with the appointment of new ministers including an Eric Woerth who bears an uncanny resemblance to the holographic doctor in Star Trek Voyager!
However, 2012 is a long way away and the PS still has the ability to put forward weak and insubstantial policies designed by a camel and intended to displease no faction in the PS as it did last time.