José Bové, the charismatic, moustachioed, pipe-smoking sheep farmer, French to his finger-tips and educated in the United States, is due to tell us on Thursday whether or not he is running for president. The press and M. Bové assume he will. I can understand why he thinks he should: neither the extreme left nor the Greens are yet making any kind of mark in the polls (they each poll around 4%). He on the other hand is hugely popular: he has great charisma, he is French to his finger tips and he farms sheep. He goes to prison regularly for destroying GM crops and he smokes a pipe. What other qualifications do you need to be the most powerful president in the world?

Well, until about 10 days ago, one would have said “Not much”. But if Ségolène Royal’s gaffs and consequent drop in the polls have done nothing else, they have shown us that actually the French do want something else. They want someone who knows what they’re talking about and who carries within them a total awareness of what responsability means. And I think even M. Bové would agree that he has not got much of that. He is the champion of the anti-globalisation left, the left which believes that big gestures (destroying fields of GM crops, brandishing your hand-cuffed wrists to the TV cameras) replace big ideas. A CSA poll released yesterday shows that 71% of French people do not want him to stand: more importantly, 68% of those on the left said they do not want him to stand. His time has past. He was at the height of his popularity in the summer of 2003, and it was precisely then, at the fête de l’Humanité, the Communist Party newspaper, that he told the press he was not interested in politics. I can only hope he remembers that wise decision, for while it is true that the extreme left, and the Greens now that M. Hulot has taken his holiday, lack a credible voice, his husky, tobacco-stained tones are not what they need.

But it is equally true that if he does not stand, the extreme left will wither. Knowing that, there is considerable pressure on him from the internet begging him to run: in very few days 15,000 signed a petition. That has now been doubled. Bové says that touches him deeply, but as Ségolène Royal has found out, there is a world of difference between having the support of even a couple of hundred thousand well-meaning internet well-wishers, and facing the implacable efficiency of the Sarkozy machine. If the French information-gathering police, the Renseignements Généraux, had fun digging around the Socialist Party’s environment spokesman for his past with Greenpeace, just imagine what a field-day they will have with Bové! And as of today they’ll be watching his iconic pipe with an eagle eye: how can he give a press conference on Thursday without it? Yet if he has it, it will have to be unlit - and that would show how much he relies on sham stage effects. Will he smoke it to provoke? That’s probably the question which will grip France on Thursday morning. Which shows to what depths it has all sunk.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Political, The pack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.