The French elections: Mr Nasty wins

The recent round of elections in France resulted in the rout of the French Left. Were the workers wrong not to vote for them?

I wonder if you can still buy that little gadget which used to be sold in joke shops. It was a black plastic box with a slot on the top. You put a penny in the slot and it made a weird grinding sound which suggested that something amazing was about to happen. After about 15 seconds a small flap opened and a plastic hand flashed out and pulled the penny down into the box from which it could not be rescued.

Clunk!

The sudden shock of seeing one’s own credulity taken advantage of and the resulting gasp of recognition is what many people may have experienced after the French Presidential electoral campaign in May. Nicolas Sarkozy – a kind of Gallic equivalent of Margaret Thatcher – is now in power for the next five years. France is no longer the exception in Europe.

Strangely enough although he managed to gain a large slice of the working-class vote, Sarkozy actually promised very little to the workers. Indeed he can be counted on to increase exploitation, unemployment and poverty. The reformist “Socialist Party” (PS) represented by Ségolène Royal promised a hell of a lot more but the voters seemed unconvinced.

As always the presidential election was presented by some as an almighty struggle between Left and Right with Sarkozy quite effectively playing the role of Mr Nasty. By contrast, Ségolène Royal proved to be completely ineffective. Her insipid and uninspired version of social reformism fooled no-one. To make matter worse, she presented herself in interviews as someone with a calling, an instrument of destiny. (Well, she does come from the same area as Joan of Arc).

For his supporters Sarkozy was represented as the epitome of modernity, economic liberalism, dynamism, and Blairism. His early morning jogging sessions contrasting with the more sedate political tradition of the conservatives in the party he inherited from Jacques Chirac. Royal was castigated for having expressed the outdated values of the Left, public sector immobilism, heavy taxes, anti-americanism and (don’t laugh) Marxism.

So much for the media Punch and Judy stuff. In reality this was a typical election under modern capitalism. Media constructed stereotypes, disinformation, mystification and rumour crowded out reasoned argument and the impartial presentation of the facts. In the final analysis, the differences between the candidates were often minimal.

European Constitution

Anyone who knows anything about French politics knows that the real agenda of the election was the European Constitution problem. Because of growing distrust of an increasingly free-market Europe, the projected constitution originally dreamed up by Giscard D’Estaing was thrown out in a referendum in 2005. Besides being a set-back for capitalist politicians bent on creating a single competitive space to counter the other big capitalist nations, this was an issue which neatly divided the PS into two groups, the pro-constitution leadership and the anti-constitution left-wing with its popular base.

As a result Royal was obliged to promise yet another referendum on the issue whilst Sarkozy promised to negotiate a mini-constitution which would be ratified by parliament, short-circuiting the scruffy Euro-sceptics who were inevitably enough presented as ‘extremists’. With Royal’s idea being a clear non-starter, the capitalist money was clearly on Sarkozy from the start, all the more since Sarko’s treaty could be ratified with the social aspects of the constitution edited out.

One of Sarko’s first moves after the election therefore was to meet Angela Merkel to talk about the issue. With Merkel’s government currently putting the German welfare state on a slimfast diet with active help from the Social Democrats this is one obstacle out of the way. In Britain, Sarko can count on New Labour’s dyed-in-the-wool opposition to a social Europe.

As for French PS, well, their Mr Europe – Jean-Pierre Jouyet – has just joined Sarko’s government. He was already on a train to Brussels on 15 May and nobody is calling him a traitor to the socialist cause (not even Royal, a close personal friend)