Ségolène Royal continues to lead her faithful back into the woolly depths of Old France. Having begun her campaign surfing on a wave of enthusiasm generated amongst the principally young blogging community, and used their votes in the primaries to defeat the ancient elephants of the Socialist Party, she yesterday confirmed the massive U-turn she initiated in her policy speech of the 11^th February. That major statement marked a return to the style and values of François Mitterrand, who came to power 26 years ago. Yesterday she went further, nominating her “new” team, consisting almost entirely of 13 figures from the past – most of whom have spent the past year telling everyone how awful she is. Her credibility plummets. Most disappointing of her choices is former prime minister Lionel Jospin (only a few months ago particularly vitriolic about her), who successfully led the party to crushing defeat in the last presidential elections. That the Socialist Party is doing badly in this election is very largely due to the fact it has failed to create a fresh identity for itself in the intervening 5 years. Royal’s initial call that she was going to change France, now, ten weeks away from the vote, rings sadly hollow. Change is indeed what France needs – I don’t mean only reforms, but a change of heart. Travelling round France last week, everyone I spoke to had the same message: they have had enough of the present bunch.

It looks as though Royal got her timing sadly wrong. Presumably she made her trunk call to the ancient elephants last week, when her ratings were dropping, despite (or because of) her February 11th policy speech. But at the beginning of this week she made a very impressive television appearance, on her own, and her popularity over the last couple of days has been rising again - but too late to cancel the call for help from her former enemies. That mis-timing may prove fatal.

Apart from anything else, Royal’s about-face bodes ill for the future if she is elected president. The incumbent is known as the weather-vane, changing direction with the slightest breeze. She seems ready to follow that tradition faithfully. Certainly nobody voting for her would know quite what they were endorsing – a new-look France embracing the 21^st century or more of the mid-20^th century dogma of control by state and unions.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 8:14 am and is filed under Political, Ségolène Royal. 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.