François Hollande may succeed in a volatile electoral environment; but victory could well be a sobering ordeal for both the French left and European social democracy
The French Socialist Party (PS) appears better placed than at any other time under the Fifth Republic to win both presidency and a majority in the Assemblée nationale. Even compared with 1981, the victory of PS candidate François Hollande, and subsequent legislative domination to form a partner government, seems more assured. A closer look at the current context, however, makes it readily apparent that victory is not certain, with a number of issues still to be resolved; and victory, should it come, may in the longer term prove to be a mixed blessing.
As a relatively new présidentiable, rapidly installed after the demise of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the pretender to the throne currently enjoys a remarkable level of popular support. A poll of polls in mid-January gave Hollande almost 30 per cent of the first-round vote, compared with 23 per cent for the incumbent President and UMP candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latest CSA poll (23/24 January) gave Hollande 31 per cent. In a second-round run-off, the margin of victory for Hollande reaches double figures. Moreover, because of France’s five-year presidential mandate (quinquennat), and the coincidence of the presidential and legislative races, victory for Hollande in the presidentials is expected to guarantee Socialist success in the legislatives.
For the Socialists and Hollande, hope can be drawn too from the dominance of the party on the Left. Communist Party challenges on its flank being a distant memory, the Left bloc will present an even more unified front in 2012 than even in 2007, when Ségolène Royal had enjoyed no small success in aggregating all small flanking parties of the centre-left. Other Left parties appear in no position to challenge Socialist hegemony. Europe-Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV), expected to field popular TV celebrity Nicolas Hulot in the presidential race, instead put forward Eva Joly, a former investigating magistrate, as its candidate for the primaries. Despite choice policy opportunities, in particular nuclear power post-Fukushima, Joly has proved unable to engage the electorate. Similarly, in the absence of Olivier Besancenot and Arlette Laguiller, two mainstays of previous presidential elections, the Extreme Left is fragmented and its inexperienced, low-popularity candidates almost invisible, as is recurrent presidential hopeful Jean-Pierre Chevènement from the Mouvement Républicain et Citoyen.
Radical left solutions are now represented most successfully by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Front de Gauche. A recent electoral coalition of the old Communists, Mélenchon’s Left Party and an assortment of other small Far Left parties, the presidential campaign’s slogan Place au Peuple betrays an avowedly populist approach to radical Left positions close to Germany’s democratic socialist Die Linke. A realist approach to Keynesian economics combined with Mélenchon’s energetic but affable personal style, currently garners an average 7.5 per cent of first-round votes.
Threats from the right
The principal threats that face Hollande and the PS are twofold, and come from the right – François Bayrou and Marine Le Pen. Bayrou, a social and economic liberal candidate, occupies a centre ground which secured 18 per cent of the vote and third place in 2007. His recent climb to double-digit polling indicates that he might again be able to capitalise on his longstanding antagonism towards Sarkozy’s policies and political style. Cooperation with Bayrou, mirroring certain sub-national partnerships, has tempted but not converted the Socialists; Bayrou himself is cultivating his position as a disrupter of the left-right duality, giving no indication of any preference between the two. IFOP’s mid-January poll indicate Bayrou’s first-round voters would switch predominantly to the left, with a 20-point differential (48-28) of his first-round voters allocating their second-round vote to Hollande and Sarkozy. How many already desert Hollande in the first round will be key.
Whilst Le Pen constitutes a greater threat for Sarkozy, in collecting disaffected right-wing voters, her current polls are of equal concern to the left for two reasons. The FN candidate seems to be increasingly gaining electoral advantage from her populist redistributive economic policies, even shamelessly mimicking the Socialists – most recently, for instance, on a return to retirement at 60. This new strategic appeal by the FN to the ‘spiralling’ middle class hit by the recession threatens to encroach further on socialist territory. Secondly, in the same IFOP poll, a massive 39 per cent of blue-collar workers intend voting Le Pen. The Socialists, with a quarter of this group, are divided over whether to try to win them back. The old guard who retain a sense of the Socialist tribune function would do so; a younger generation focused on public-sector cadres and affluent liberal middle-class support which is numerically far higher would not. Whatever, second-round intentions for workers indicate only a 60/40 split in favour of Hollande. Those four in ten workers may truly be lost to the Left. Hardly surprising, overall, that Hollande chose specifically to address all those who have been ‘abandoned, stigmatised or relegated’ in his opening campaign meeting in January.
The delicate art of self control
Within the party, three challenges – leadership, party fragmentation and policy renewal – have been manifest since Jospin’s departure in 2002. On the first, Hollande has managed to safeguard unity since his nomination, which was not a given as the divisions of the disastrous party congress of Reims in 2008 resurfaced during the primaries. Unlike Royal in 2007, Hollande has proved skilful in avoiding losing support from disgruntled rivals. Martine Aubry, whom Hollande defeated in the final run-off for socialist nomination, is now back in the campaign, as is Royal. The dual structure in the presidential campaign staff, which brings together the party’s top leaders and Hollande’s supporters, is testimony to this desire to maintain cohesion.
Second, Hollande seems to have liberated himself from constraints imposed by the adoption of a common policy platform by the PS ahead of the nomination race in May 2011. Hollande made clear early on that his programme would differ from the common platform. The unveiling of his 60 engagements pour la France on 26 January confirmed the content of specific proposals, such as the creation of 150,000 youth jobs and 60,000 teaching positions, as well as providing less specific commitments in areas such as healthcare reform. Whilst the Le Bourget rally has set the campaign on a trajectory towards the left, any attempt to move back to the centre will inevitably create tension amongst the party’s ideological factions. The orthodox guard in the party, such as old mitterrandiste Henri Emmanuelli and former rocardienne Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, have openly challenged Hollande’s programme on job creations in the education sector, unwilling to simply follow a line consistent with austerity.
Together with establishing firm leadership, Hollande’s ability to formulate unambiguous policy will be key to the coming presidential battle. His ‘French dream’ has so far not triggered the fervour and emotional bond that accompanied Mitterrand’s pledge to ‘change people’s life’ in 1981. The Le Bourget rally aroused some excitement, but popular fiscal expansionist solutions of the past are simply not open to a Socialist candidate, particularly one with unpleasant memories of the damaging U-turn on budgetary rigour in the early 1980s. Crowd-pleasing attacks on the ‘world of finance’ may prove hollow if put to the test of presidential incumbency. Realistic ideological alternatives to Sarkozy’s line of austerity are difficult to position, because the territory of fiscal orthodoxy is already firmly occupied by François Bayrou. Consequently, the Socialist candidate finds himself forced to compete more in terms of presidential credibility, a difficult task as an opposition candidate, and made all the more arduous by a president intent on presiding to the very last second as proof that he is the man for the job. That Sarkozy is ‘enjoying’ record unpopularity, and the Left bloc overall is in fact some 10 per cent behind the actual score of left-wing candidates in the 1981 presidential election, also encourages the notion that Hollande is doing well only because of his opponents’ problems.
And thus victory could be a mixed blessing. In a period of economic instability, rising unemployment and a public sector still in desperate need of reform, a five-year mandate for the Socialist candidate and a supporting government with a largely nascent programme may bring into sharp relief their own incapacity to provide any broadly palatable reforms. Similarly, Hollande has yet to clarify his intentions with regards to European leaders’ efforts to resolve the Eurozone crisis. It is unlikely that unilateral promises to create Eurobonds, renegotiate the late-2011 deal on the Euro, or invite German Chancellor Merkel to consider a new Treaty in 2013 will meet with approval in the European arena. Even after 17 years’ exclusion from the presidency, more immediate electoral victories may not be the route to long-term success.
A contribution to State of the Left - Policy Network's monthly insight bulletin that reports from across the world of social democratic politics
Jocelyn Evans is professor of politics at the University of Salford (@JocelynAJEvans)
Gilles Ivaldi is a CNRS researcher in political science based at the University of Nice
The authors provide analysis and commentary on French politics and the 2012 election at the blog ‘500Signatures’