Folly which crippled Greece will be repeated in socialist France
HOLLANDE’S victory was the most predictable election contest I can remember. No poll in recent months ever suggested that Sarkozy was in front. I have been keeping an eye on a US betting website – Sarkozy never traded above a 40 per cent chance of winning, and that was before Christmas. He was doomed.
Of course, commentators will suggest that Hollande’s victory marks a new era, a decisive lurch to the left. I don’t see it that way. The vote against Sarkozy was very much a personal vote. He was flashy, brash and arrogant. He went to one of the finest restaurants in Paris on the night of his election in 2007. He ignored the crowd of supporters who wanted to celebrate their victory with him. He then relaxed for a week on the yacht of a billionaire friend. Within a few months, he started dating an ex- supermodel. All of this alienated many people. He was “President Bling-Bling”, while Carla Bruni was known as “Marie Antoinette”. This wasn’t a great platform on which to seek re-election, regardless of current economic difficulties. The socialists had already won 47 per cent of the vote in the Presidential election of 2007, before the financial crisis. Sarkozy’s unpopularity was the missing ingredient which gave them victory this year.
Sarkozy’s presidency was in many ways a study in failure and opportunism. He trimmed his sail to every wind of popular opinion, only to find himself shipwrecked. For those of us who had watched him for the last ten years, it was disappointing to see a man who ran for office as a genuine reformer turn his back on “la rupture”, as he called it, and revert to statist solutions.
He said in 2007 that he would be France’s Mrs Thatcher. In 2008, as the world was swept by the financial crisis, he lashed out at capitalism and finance. Latterly, in desperation, Sarkozy turned to the far right and criticised excessive immigration. He sounded like a man who was a challenger, not like a man who had been President for five years. His energy was always unfocused and incoherent in policy terms.
The Sarkozy era, with all its vulgarity and showmanship, is at an end. Yet it’s difficult to see how Hollande will bring about the change that France needs. Hollande has run as a left wing populist, promising a 75 per cent tax rate for the richest citizens and, even more absurdly, cutting the retirement age from 62 to 60. Yet in the last couple of weeks, he has attempted to soothe the markets’ worries. He now talks, almost like a German politician, about balancing the budget.
Despite Hollande’s rhetoric, he will preside over a French economy which is sclerotic, with a bloated public sector, lavish entitlements and little growth. There remains almost no commitment, among the French elite as a whole, to the kinds of policies which can deliver long term prosperity. There will be no attempt to cut spending. No real reduction in borrowing. The folly which brought Greece, Ireland and Spain to their knees will be repeated in France, only over a longer period.
The French state has always sat ambivalently in the balance of Eurozone countries. France is considered a member of the core. It sees itself the equal of Germany, Holland and the other strong euro countries, by virtue of the size of its economy, its traditions and ideals. If the euro project can be said to belong to any country, it’s France. Its bureaucrats and political elite were pushing for the single currency even when, in the early 1990s, many Germans remained committed to their darling Deutschmark.
Yet, in the structure of its economy, and its failure to exert fiscal discipline, France remains a country of the South. This tension is unlikely to be resolved. Hollande has rejected austerity. A pragmatist of the left, he will struggle to appease his supporters, should he wish to govern responsibly. Yet if he does pander to this constituency, the future for France looks bleak.
“Sarkozy isn’t a man of culture”, one student told a satellite channel yesterday. In France, this matters. Sarkozy’s career is finished. Unfortunately, the vote will not bring the resolution of France’s chronic problems any closer.
Kwasi Kwarteng is the Conservative MP for Spelthorne in Surrey.