Last Friday we made a small but meaningful step in our transition when we registered to vote in Hellemmes-Lille. There are differences between us in that Max as a french national is entitled to vote in all elections whereas I am only able to vote in local and european polls. Equally I am entitled to register to vote in UK general elections though I need to find a fellow registered Brit to sign my form and it appears that UK democracy is held hostage to the post as voting forms are sent out anything between a week and 3-4 days before the election day. Quite how that equates with 3 days to get to France and 3 days to be received back in the UK I am not certain but ther seems to be a major chance of my vote not being allowed.
It is somewhat academic in any case as none of the main parties attracts currently. Blair will have quit and his replacement will probably be the - suddenly - jovial Mr Brown. I cannot take David Cameron seriously, not because he is younger than I, but because he appears to be attempting to bestride so many bandwagons at once he is in serious danger of doing himself a real mischief. He has been compared with a younger Blair attempting to inject some realism into Tory policies and thus making the Conservatives more electable yet there are two more powerful forces at work over which he has little say. Firstly Labour- or more accurately Blair - has stolen the middle ground and Conservative policy is no longer readily identifiable as different. Secondly, the more likey scenario, should the Tories regain power, is that the Labour government will have been rejected rather than the nice new caring Conservatives fully embraced as the torch carriers to the future.
As a person with much sympathy for the Liberal Democrats I cannot understand the election of the might Ming as leader. Their immediate positive appeal for me has all but disappeared and their chances of bettering their performance reduced unless they benefit from the anti-Labour vote. With three or four years to go before another general election it is more than likely that Mr Campbell will have been replaced by a more youthful and more appealing leader.
It is about leaders. The idea that we don't in truth have a quasi president is clearly wrong. The leader epitomises their party, giving it a face, a voice and a presence. Gerneral elections determine who our next leader is going to be as well as which flavour of government will govern.
This is where other systems differ. Here in France it is more than possible for a president of one political persuasion to preside over a government of a different hue. Interestingly the president appoints the Prime Minister. Currently the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, is not even an elected member of the French parliament.
As I am not enfranchised for the presidential elections I feel a sense of independence and thus allow myself , if not a platform, then at least the opportunity, to comment and perhaps to clarify events in the lead up to the election next May.
The key players are as yet unconfirmed yet fixed in the collective mind of the French nation. They are Ségolène Royal for the left (an untidy muddle of socialists whose elegant disagreements give the UK Labour party the air of a marriage made and conducted in heaven), and Nicolas Sarkozy for the right. Neither has yet been annointed though the latter is unchallenged apart from the unlikely event of Chirac's restanding or the aformentioned patrition and unpopular Prime Minister throwing his made-to- measure hat into the ring. I think the right are going to bite the bullet and back the man they have variously hated and feted to continue their current 2 terms in power.
The left is another story. Ségo, as she is called, is equally hated and equally feted though not in quite the same way as enjoyed by her putative presidential opponent. The dinosaurs are lining up to, increasingly less subtly, rubbish this charismatic woman who is so far ahead in the opinion polls that the other supposed contenders are but dots on the horizon. They don't seem to have understood, despite the rout back in 2002, that merely being around for a long time does not give you precedence for a bash at the presidency. This is especially true in today's France where agreement that the winds, if not the gales, of change need to blow and soon. Whether either party has adequate breath to maintain the changes is another matter.
Madame Royal is a woman. Obviously. This immediately makes gives her a disadvantage in a country where being a woman is still very much a lesser occupation than being a man. Whatever politically correct phrases are wafted about? I believe this to be true. Ironically her gender is in equal part an advantage. Her election as president would give the left and politics in France something new, something fresh. But will the behemoths of the Parti Socialiste (PS) make way for the people's favourite or will they patronise them again with a more correct candidate? The polls show that every other potential socialist candidate would suffer defeat by Monsieur Sarkozy; ignominious defeat too. Were they to ignore the popularity of Ségo then that would be a well-deserved defeat and, finally perhaps, the wake-up call that they so badly need.
What of the other socialist candidates? I can expound only on one though it is worth adding that a François Hollande is the partner of some 25 years of Royale. They are unmarried parents to 4 children. They have announced the possibility of a simple marriage but this has not yet happened so there is the potential for an unmarried mother as president with a senior member of her own party as the new belle Bernadette.
Although not officially declared, the big loser in the last presidential election, Lionel Jospin, has made it known that, if called upon, he would be willing to accept the burden of the highest office in the land. The sheer vanity , indeed hubris, of this man is evidence of the distance between the political elite and the electorate. He, along with the rest of his colleagues, lacks what Ségolène Royal has in spadesful ie the common touch.
Just as the British monarchy could not understand the appeal of a certain princess who had not been tested over long rigorous years in the correct way of being properly royal, just as they balked, horrified, against her contribution and assimilating her attempts to modernise the institution (excuse this long sentence), the PS risk alienating themselves and their chances. By doing "the right thing" the left may be left behind again.
No comments:
Post a Comment