Does the left need a helping hand?
“If Nicolas Sarkozy is elected in a couple of weeks, we shall have no excuse.” Thus writes former socialist prime minister Michel Rocard in Friday’s Le Monde, calling for an alliance between the Socialists and François Bayrou’s UDF party. As one of France’s elder statesmen, he sees nothing to stop the two parties joining forces - their policies on employment, housing, debt, education, Europe are essentially the same, he says. Well, not really. But the very fact that Rocard feels he has to say this shows how weak he believes the socialist position to be. He clearly believes that on her own Royal will not get into the second round and that if Bayrou gets through he will not necessarily hold out a hand to her. Better, says Rocard, to cement an alliance now. On Sunday Bernard Kouchner, another experienced socialist politician, founder of Medecins Sans Frontiers and Head of the UN administration in Kosovo in 1999, agreed with Rocard that an alliance is the only way now to save the socialists from a second defeat in a row.
Ségolène Royal immediately brushed aside any chance of rapprochement; initially Bayrou said he was pleased, that Rocard’s suggestion confirmed Bayrou’s main argument that to pull France out of its crisis the best of both left and right have to come together. Then this morning on the radio Bayrou changed his mind, saying it was too early to form an alliance with only the left. The UDF’s position was to be independent of both major parties and he could not suddenly join one or the other.
On Sunday, just one week from the first round vote, three polls showed Ségolène Royal climbing again, taking votes apparently from Bayrou, so maybe she is right and does not need that helping hand. But Sarkozy is still well in the lead and might still get a majority in the first round, which would cancel the second.
Rocard and Kouchner are not the first socialist heavy-weights to jump ship and swim to the centre. Presumably they feel that if Royal wins they will not get a look-in, so they may as well go to Bayrou who, if he wins, will be desperately looking for people to form a government. But their public defection has not caused much damage. It’s an fascinating aspect of this election that none of the oldies, left or right, carry any weight with the voters. As if the older and more experienced you are, the less people want to listen to you. In that sense there really has been a break.