Blue Bayrou Blows it.
This piece was first posted on May 24th
Answering Sean’s point about Bayrou and his “appalling tactical and strategic choices between the two rounds,” I agree that from the outside it did look extraordinary: there was a man who against all expectation had gathered huge public support in a short time, whose ideas for forming a national coalition government seemed to touch a national nerve and be exactly what a high percentage of the French electorate wanted. Then he blew it. What is interesting about the above sentence is that if you substitute “woman” for “man” and “she” for “he”, it is also true. For in fact in the campaign two candidates came from nowhere and both did very well: together they represented more French people than Sarkozy, who had dominated the political landscape for five years, ever since he was first appointed to the ministry of the interior. Both of these outsider candidates touched a nerve in the French, but somehow it was not enough. In fact both made mistakes – Ségolène Royal early on in the campaign, Bayrou, as Sean says, the day after the first round of elections. Royal managed to recover sufficiently from her mistakes to get a very reasonable score, Bayrou having attained a reasonable score, took a gamble and lost. A one-off mistake or does he not have what it takes? At the moment it looks as if neither he nor Royal will survive. I hope once the parliamentary elections are over I shall be able to talk quietly to Charles de Courson, one of Bayrou’s advisors, to find out what he thinks happened.
But both Royal and Bayrou were up against a formidable and well-funded campaigning machine, dazzling the senses with its parade of rock-stars and other personalities, the whole directed by a man who is a remarkable strategist. Having spent the whole of his first campaign playing to the right and extreme right, Sarkozy moved not to the left, as everyone predicted, but to the more easily winnable centre. Within hours of getting into the second round he was pulling Bayrou’s men to him. He did this in large part by blatantly copying Bayrou’s ideas for a coalition - something he had pooh-poohed all through the first campaign. 22 of Bayrou’s 29 MP’s changed sides, most before the second round. His ideas stolen, Bayrou’s ship was literally abandoned.
One of those who left him was Hervé Morin, and for his lack of loyalty to Bayrou, Sarkozy rewarded him with the ministry of defence. Then, to show he is not really a Sarko-puppet, Morin decided to form his own party, with several of Bayrou’s other former friends. But French law says a party must field at least 50 candidates, or rather if a party fields 50 candidates it receives 1.63 euro for each vote received. 50 necessary candidates from the 22 he had leaves?……Morin was having difficulty making up the numbers, so he flicked through his well-thumbed copy of “Politics for Dummies”, written and presented to him by his friend with the unpronounceable name celebrating his fifth decade as president of a former French colony in West Africa. Morin found the answer in the section marked “Elections – How to Win Them”: he enlisted his family. So the candidates now standing for Morin’s “Parti social liberal européen” include: Catherine Broussot-Morin (his wife), Julien Morin, Philippe Morin and, for parity, Lisa Morin. Still not enough, so he roped in his parliamentary assistant, his press agent, his secretaries, his internet technician and…….his chauffeur. All are now candidates for parliament.
My first reaction was that if this is the sort of person Sarkozy believes is the best possible Minister of Defence, his judgement – well, what I thought does not matter. But then I learnt that in fact this is common practice among smaller parties in France, a way of getting state money to keep you solvent for five years. My taxes pay for M. Morin’s family. In other words it is not that Morin was copying some stereotype African dictator, more that African dictators copy common French practice.