Finally the filming of the documentary on the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, France’s post-post-graduate school for those who want to run the country, is finished and I can settle into the editing and go back to writing this blog on a regular basis. I apologise to my regular readers for the long breaks, although I hope my new knowledge about the French elite will find its way into the blog.
On Friday, in Paris, I had one of those enriching conversations about the election with two people who at 8.30 I did not know but by 6.00 I knew quite well: my cameraman and the taxi-driver who ferried us about the capital all day. The cameraman, like so many others, has spent the last couple of months on the road with most of the different candidates. He follows them every day, watches more than listens, and never gets to talk to them himself, since he is simply the medium though which the message passes. But having spent his entire working life watching people through his viewfinder he is a pretty shrewd judge of what’s what. The taxi-driver, also accepted as no more than a means to an end, listens all day to his fares as they chatter on  about the election, watching only through his mirror. The cameraman had no time for Sarkozy, but, as a left-leaning person, was terminally disappointed by Royal, while Bayrou is too soft to succeed. Nobody likes a man who is half one thing and half another.
What preoccupied the cameraman was the environment, perplexed by the central contradiction that cutting back on emissions means cutting back on our way of life. At the mention of green-house gases, of course, the taxi-driver shifted in his seat uncomfortably, fiddled with the volume on his radio and tried to bring the conversation back to more reasonable topics, like the recent violence at the Gare du Nord. As the day wore on and we got to know each other better he did come up with the suggestion that a massive, taxi-exempt congestion charge in Paris would be the best way of cutting exhaust emission at a stroke, enabling him to work in greater freedom.
Just after Christmas, the campaign kicked off with great excitement and chatter about the environment – at that time there were four of five potential candidates representing the various factions of the ecology movement. That first surge culminated with a much publicized document drawn up by the charismatic Nicolas Hulot, a television presenter. Hulot challenged all the major candidates to sign his charter, in effect promising that if elected they would address in  proper fashion the problems of climate change. Hulot is a household name in France (not because his grandfather gave the family name to Jacques Tati’s cinematic persona, but because of the popularity of his own unpronounceable entitled  TV series Ushuaïa) and at that early stage of the election he had the clout to be able to make candidates bend to his will. But since then the campaign has degenerated into intense navel-gazing (well, that’s not entirely fair – the unemployed, the national debt, the economy generally are all important, but they are purely French issues, and the president is supposed to look beyond France into the greater abyss), with none of the main candidates talking seriously about Europe (the 50^th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome was greeted by silence all round), let alone the rest of the world. A fact which in itself shows France’s changing perspective: a few years ago it considered itself a weight in international affairs. So the silence on how France is going to fight global warming, for instance, is sad. Monsieur Hulot thought so too, and yesterday organised a rally in Paris to bring the environment back into the headlines – the only way to make the candidates sit up and take notice.
As the cameraman said, the reason candidates have dropped green issues is obvious.: de-polluting the atmosphere is in direct contradiction with increasing economic growth, both personal and national. Cutting back on green-house gases means cutting back on our wasteful lifestyle – all of us, not just big companies – and at every level. Next weekend the French roads will be choked with cars, admittedly most of them full, which makes a change, crawling off to holiday destinations because we have all come to assume that holiday homes a long way from our principal homes are a right. Airports will be full of people flying to further destinations for the same reason. But if people stop going on holiday, the hotel and restaurant trade will suffer, airlines will collapse, more people will be made redundant. But even in our working lives we all move about the country to an extraordinary extent, creating the wealth which France needs to get back into a situation of full employment. The French public know this, and may be the reason why the only Green candidate, Dominique Voynet, is scarcely polling 1% (Hulot decided not to stand, naively considering his charter was sufficient)
Last year university students took to the streets because the government seemed to be proposing employment measures that might reduce the style in which they have become accustomed to live by reducing the number of lifetime-guaranteed jobs. Learning from that, the presidential candidates have built on the assumption that everyone wants to have greater job-security and earn more money, so it is little wonder they have not, dare not, address serious environmental issues. It’s a choice we all have to make.
Hulot’s demonstration will bring the subject back on to the agenda of all the candidates, but it is now plain that none of them take it seriously. Like all their campaign promises, commitment to the environment is to be taken as gentle fiction.
 

English-speaking readers might be forgiven for thinking that there is only one paysan standing as candidate in the French presidential elections – the Roquefort cheese producing MacDonalds-basher, José Bové. But there is another, higher in the opinion polls and much more likely to get at least into the second round: François Bayrou. Born in the foothills of the Pyrenees, both his father and mother worked the family farm (Calixte and Emma, names that seem as old as French farming). When François Bayrou was 23, studying at Bordeaux university, his father was killed in a farming accident and overnight the young man became a farmer, later a teacher as well. Politics was the last thing on his mind.

Last Saturday at an agricultural fair in the Gers he made a major and delicate speech about the future of French farming. As you will see if you look at the video, his audience was not studded with rappers, left-bank intellectuals or any other Paris-Match favoured pipole, but some 500 farmers, a sea of white-haired, thick-set ruddy-faced men. Indeed, the second-most-noticeable-thing about Bayrou is his avoidance of big razzmatazz meetings, so beloved of his two principal rivals. He prefers to talk like an ordinary human-being at ordinary human-being-sized events. The most-noticeable thing about him is his spectacular rise in the opinion polls.

A farmer addressing farmers deep in farming France: a recipe, you’d think, for more of the “change the CAP over my dead body” stuff dealt out so often by Jacques Chirac. But no. Bayrou is the first French politician I have heard admit that the [French-inspired] CAP policy, based on production, is wrong for all sorts of reasons. One of these, says Bayrou, is that French farmers hold not only the “tissue agricole francais” in their hands, but “le tissue agricole de la plantète”. World agriculture, Bayrou says quite plainly, is endangered by the (French) agricultural policy. European subsidies on production have ruined African agriculture: “We have assassinated the African farmer,” he said “And this policy will be changed, so that we cannot be held responsible. We cannot let the African countries die of hunger.” For years the theory, pushed by Tony Blair, The Economist and their ilk, that the Common Agricultural Policy is actively harming African farmers, has been pooh-poohed by Chirac and those who want to maintain the pampered status quo of their dwindling agricultural voters. Bayrou’s stand is as brave as it is clear-headed.

Another consequence of the European agricultural policy, says M. Bayrou, is that whereas 20 years ago French farmers were independent, now they are totally dependent on subsidies (around me that is certainly true). At the same time the image of farmers has gone from being defenders of nature to nature’s principal polluters. Bayrou’s quiet but insistent message to the farmers was clear: be independent of Brussels with its stifling bureaucracy, live by and with the market. He suggests “new” markets such as growing cereals for biofuels. At the moment cereal-produced alternatives to fossil-fuels are almost unknown in France, whereas in the UK Tesco has been selling a bioethanol mix at its pumps for over a year. In France such an initiative could only come from the government: an announcement of future intent was made last June, but quietly forgotten, like so much else, during the long summer lunch-break.

It was supposed to be one of those ennobling moments – uniting us all in the fight to save our environment from the relentless onslaught of our own worst selves. Instead, it left me with a feeling of ridicule, watching those hoping for power play-acting a senseless charade.

Nicolas Hulot, a very popular television presenter and committed ecologist who announced on Monday that he is not, after all, running for presidency, had persuaded ten of the principal candidates to endorse publicly his Charter for the Environment. All of them, and more, have already signed the charter, but that was not deemed enough by M. Hulot, who sees his role now as an outside, non-involved pressure, a thorn, if you like, on all in the cause of the environment. So yesterday, at the new Musée du quai Branly, brain-child of Jacques Chirac and known colloquially as the museum of primitive arts, ten candidates agreed to come and publicly swear allegiance, bend the knee to the Great Green God. A sort of re-run of Runnymede in 1215, when King John was obliged by his barons to sign their Charter, known as Magna.

Hulot’s charter is perfectly reasonable. It consists simply of ten aims and five propositions. The aims include: making industrial products which either last longer, can be repaired easily or at least re-cycled; reducing our reliance on coal, gas and oil; re-thinking transport to decrease road-traffic. There has to be a limit to urban sprawl, so that green spaces are preserved; a tax on things that harm the environment. Agriculture must be re-orientated, respecting “le travail paysan”; in health-care the charter aims to concentrate on prevention rather than curing problems once present; research must be for sustainable projects. Finally, in its international policies France must give priority to the fight against further and increasing environmental damage.

None of it is revolutionary, some of the aims may be questionable but on the whole they are worthy. The five propositions are similarly well-intentioned, a deputy prime minister in charge of sustainable development, for example. So why do I feel yesterday’s exercise ridiculous?

It was the very concept of a public ceremony. There’s nothing wrong with getting someone who’s likely to become the world’s most powerful president to commit in public to an environmental charter, and obviously anything to do with elections will be done in the full glare of the press. The mistake, for me, especially since the host was the telegenic Hulot, was to stage it like a superficial chat-show, with each guest wheeled-on, slotted a certain number of sound-bytes to promote his or her latest product while the beaming host nods approvingly, then wheeled off to make room for the next guest, who is received with audience applause which wipes from the memory what the last person has just said. Rather like the radio and television news which put numbers of dead in Iraq in the same breath as the number of goals scored by a football club. It trivialises. We all know that nine out of the ten candidates will never have to put their commitment to the test – for them it is pure show and a waste of everybody’s time. We all know that the one person finally elected will adopt only those measures which he or she finds politically expedient at the time. Like a television chat-show, all it does is promote the ever-smiling host.

Except that this one failed in the most important part. Hulot’s wish, apparently, was that all ten candidates should be photographed together – forget our differences, solidarity in the face of the global warming. A rousing company sing-song as finale, so we all leave feeling better. But for his image-conscious guests, that was too much. Royal, first on, was not going to be photographed next to Sarkozy, last on. Everything was carefully orchestrated – not by Hulot but by the candidates. Like any other chat-show host, he was being used, the tail wagging the dog. Which just made it seem even more ridiculous.

What’s the point of having 43 candidates if two have already sewn-up everything between them? Why don’t three or four of the middle bunch get together to break the Ségo/Sarko stranglehold? Well, I think that will happen, and when it does, remember: you read it first in the Prospect blog – although I take no credit for it, it’s simple common sense. An alliance of the green-centre-right-leaning-left-but-whoops-not-too-far. The big surprise, a media event selling more tickets even last Sunday’s Sarko-circus, and it could happen on Monday.

François Bayrou, Nicolas Hulot, Corinne Lepage, Dominique Voynet and perhaps Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. Names unknown outside France, and within France some don’t raise much enthusiasm – as individuals, but perhaps as a team? Not very sexy, voting for a coalition of four or five people, but yesterday’s BVA poll shows that as individuals they would take around 20% of the total vote (as against Royal with 15%, Sarkozy with 16%). Perhaps collectively they would take slightly more, if people believed in them. And their presence would unsettle if not unseat Le Pen.

So who are they? François Bayrou (6%) is the best-known politician, I wrote about him on the 13th. Ahead of him in the BVA poll is Nicolas Hulot (9%), who is not a politician at all, but a TV presenter (someone said recently that if Miss France was a candidate she’d do better than most of the “small” candidates). For the last 9 years he has fronted an extremely popular environmental show called Ushuaïa (proof that the title is irrelevant if the content is good). The French have not had the benefit of David Attenborough, David Bellamy, Gerald Durrell or even Armand and Michaela Denis, so falling in love with a man in an anorak talking earnestly about nature while hugging gorillas is a new experience. M. Hulot has his own foundation, and has drawn up an environmental charter which (thanks to recent international developments, particularly the Stern Report in October) he has arm-twisted all the candidates to sign, thus committing them in public to push ecological issues if they are elected. So far, despite their seductive advances, he has refused to ally himself with either Sarko or Ségo: he has said he will announce his decision on whether to run (and if so, in which direction) on Monday. This Monday, the 22^nd. My guess is that instead of making it 42 also-rans, he will announce a coalition with Bayrou, Lepage, Voynet and perhaps Dupont-Aignan.

Corinne Lepage and Dominique Voynet are well-known Green politicians. In 1995 Lepage (1%) became the environment minister in Alain Juppé’s ill-fated government. She lasted two years and has never recovered from the uncomplimentary epithet “a right-wing green”. She stood for president in 2002 (the mayor of a neighbouring village endorsed her – and did again this year) and she’s written a sensible, downloadable book.

Dominique Voynet (2%) took over from Lepage as minister of the environment in 1997, under the Jospin government. She is on the left, the official candidate this year for the Verts and a senator.

An optional extra could be Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (not quoted in the BVA poll): he is unique in that he stands on the moderate right as an alternative to Sarkozy. He resigned from the UMP last Saturday. Listening to an interview with him, what jumped out was his saying the last thing we want is France to be like London, where it’s the law of the jungle. It always amuses me that the country which invented (and uniquely maintains) civilised queuing is said, outre-manche, to be roaming with untamed beasts, red in tooth and claw (but not in politics). I shall return to the theme of the misuse of national stereo-types in the French election on another day.

Can these four or five individualists form a credible coalition? Can they sell that as an idea? Given the creakiness at the top of the bill, given the current importance of ecology and the growing idea of participative democracy, which might be better represented by a coalition than by a single top-down controller, it is entirely possible: Hulot as planetarily-committed president (perhaps charmingly behaving like his grandfather who, as Jacques Tati’s neighbour, inspired the character of that name), Bayrou as PM, the women making France a green, hunter-free haven, and Dupont-Aignan in solar topee, liberally daubed in jungle-juice, warily stalking the corridors of the ministry of economics. It’s intriguing, I think they should give it a try – frankly, apart from possibly Bayrou, they’ve got nothing to lose.