Bienvenue et bonne chance à Francois Hollande. Like Aesop’s tortoise he watched for three decades as the smarter, smoother, more eloquent hares of French politics raced past him. But now he has become the most politician with the most power in the west as the president of France exercises more authority than a US president hemmed in by Congress, a German chancellor with constitutional checks and balances, and a British prime minister who is not head of state and has to constantly manage party problems in the Commons.
What does it mean for France, for Europe and France’s long-time rival, the offshore European island called Britain? For France, this was an election that Sarkozy lost more than Hollande won. Like other politicians in French (and British) history, Sarkozy was an energetic, at times, brilliant minister but the fairy who gave him so many gifts at birth did not sprinkle the magic dust that makes a national leader. Like Gordon Brown here he had to lead France through the nightmare of managing his nation’s fortunes through the post-crash crisis.
Sarkozy joins the long list of European leaders booted out of office since 2008. But he was unable to read the changing times. He kept repeating the incantations of the long neoliberal era that began in 1980 and now has run its course. He caroused with the uber-rich and after an innovative start when he brought in new ministers from the left, as well as black and Muslim woman ministers by the end his language on immigration and Europe was barely different from the populist xenophobic right. If there is one lesson from his failed campaign it is that banging on Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant drums may feel good but alienates as much as it wins support.
Hollande simply kept his calm. Most French socialists over-promise and under-deliver. Hollande has reversed that rule. His programme is limited. It will be made up according to events and developments. His 75 per cent tax rate on those earning over one million euros only covers about 3,000 super-earners. But the symbolism is important. It is the first time the super-rich have been asked to rejoin their nation and it contrasts with David Cameron’s tax cuts for millionaires.
Hollande has one most of the experienced team of ministers to choose from. Many are Anglophile and most are Anglophone. They have seen close up all the mistakes that François Mitterrand and Lionel Jospin made. They are pragmatists rather than ideologues. Dangers may lurk here. France today, like Gaul in Caesar’s time, is divided into three – the left, the right, and the hard-right. The left is divided with the shades of the old French communist party with its impossiblist protectionist demands, its hate of Europe and its crude ‘France for the French’ xenophobia back on the streets with popular support and a charismatic leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The UMP will lick its wounds but the party organisation is stronger than when the mainstream right was divided between Jacques Chirac and Valérie Giscard d’Estaing in the Mitterrand years. The new force is Marine Le Pen’s National Front. She prefers to call her followers Marineistes not Frontistes. She appears to have moved her party onto UKIP territory or that of the Swiss People’s party which has 30 per cent vote of the vote in Switzerland. She speaks for the disenchanted white working class, and has a big following in the low-paid public sector. The Daily Mail endorsed her as Britain’s mass-selling middle-class tabloid can recognise one of its own. The UMP marched rightwards as Sarkozy tried to win back her voters. After a summer pause, stand by for considerable tension as Hollande finds himself constrained by economic reality and the need for tough decisions that will reduce the comfort zone of many ordinary French citizens who do not realise that their agreeable way of life has been paid for by debt, not by earned income.
But Hollande may have luck on his side. Although Europe barely figured in the campaign, it is Hollande who is emerging as the spokesman for a major revision of the Merkel-Cameron austerity line. The word ‘growth’ is back on the agenda. Hollande is more pro-European than Sarkozy and has quietly been an EU supporter especially during the bitter Socialist party divisions during the 2005 referendum on the EU constitution. A Merkel-Hollande concordat is perfectly conceivable just as the Socialist President Mitterrand forged a close alliance with the Christian Democratic Chancellor Kohl. Sarkozy was openly and crudely rude about Mrs Merkel. Hollande is Monsieur Politesse and gets on with anyone and everyone. Europe is often about style as much as substance and President Hollande is comfortable in his European boots. The great German angst is twofold. The first fear is a break-up of the Eurozone which would devastate German exports. The second fear is the rise of nation-first economics, 21st century protectionism as advanced by Le Pen and Mélenchon. To win Hollande’s support to keep France firmly in the Eurozone and to face down ‘France for the French’ economics, Germany will make concessions.
For Britain, this will leave the increasingly Eurosceptic Conservative government more isolated than ever, a spectator in the next stage of European developments. Iain Duncan Smith’s crude insult that all the French were welcome to come and live in England (so much for immigration controls!) if the Socialists won was vulgar chauvinism. But Sarkozy shows that five-year governments are now the norm and a febrile electorate does not trust any of its leaders. It is a big boost for Ed Miliband who, like François Hollande, has suffered scorn from the commentariat because he is not seen as dashing and dynamic as other big beasts in the Labour party. Milliband can do worse than copy Hollande and let the right lose itself in its own contradictions rather than pretend the left has a new programmatic vision that claims all or most of the answers to current problems.
David Cameron’s enthusiastic endorsement for Sarkozy and his impolite snub in refusing to see Hollande during the French socialist’s London visit in February is just another example of Cameron’s poor judgement. But it will forgotten now and Cameron could do worse than go soon to meet Hollande and see if Britain and France can deepen defence cooperation, and even some joint security and foreign policy. Neither nation has the money to maintain a defence budget that is required of permanent members of the UN Security Council. Labour should put pressure on Cameron to work collaboratively with Hollande and other European partners on a new integrated defence profile for the 21st century. Hollande has said France will pull out of Afghanistan in 2012 and Cameron should also consider cutting the pointless British death toll and draw down more quickly.
When Mitterrand won he worked with Margaret Thatcher, supporting her in the Falklands conflict, endorsing the Single European Act, the biggest sharing of sovereignty in European history, and jointly agreeing that Jacque Delors should be the European Commission president. Mitterrand also backed Thatcher over the cruise missiles crisis. But can David Cameron overcome the strongly Euro-hostile William Hague, IDS and other cabinet members who believe the Mail-Sun-Telegraph myths about Europe? Labour should highlight the isolationist politics of the coalition and remind the Lib Dems that cooperation with France and other big EU states make sense for Britain.
No one should have illusions. Hollande has shown he can win. He has now to show he can govern. It will be the hardest test the French left has ever faced. If he succeeds he will bring the European left back to life. If, like Léon Blum in 1936, or the socialist governments that were kicked out by voters after just five years in the 1980s, 1990s and in 2002, Hollande fails to find a rhythm and energy that commands support, the future of the European left is bleak indeed.
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Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham, and a former Europe minister. Follow him on @denismacshane and www.denismacshane.com
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In the description of Hollande’s first day as President elect, top of the list came a phone call from Mrs Merkel, followed by those from Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. In the long list of those whose congratulations were received, the top twenty or so were printed in bold. Somewhere after the President of Algeria came David Cameron, not in bold type, and with an enigmatic comment to the effect that we will have to deal with the UK in due course!