Ségolène makes her bid for France
Sunday 11th February was the date Ségolène Royal set to pick herself up, shake herself down and start all over again. After rocketing to success throughout 2006, to be overwhelmingly elected the socialist candidate in November, she went into a stall throughout December and January. She said she was listening to her compatriots cries of despair. Her compatriots, losing faith, said she has no ideas. The 11th February was the day she fixed to convince the world that she is right.
Her initial instinct to listen to the electorate was a good one, it marked her out from her predecessors and some of her rivals. But her second instinct seems to me highly dubious. Rather than continue to surge forward with new ideas and new technology to conquer new voters, she decided to fall back on the methods used by Mitterrand in 1981: in January of that year he announced his 110 Propositions, in February 11th of this year she has announced her 100 propositions. Today’s speech was written for her by Erik Orsenna, one of France’s most distinguished writers, but too well-known as Mitterrand’s speech-writer. Copying Mitterrand to that extent, falling back on things that worked 26 years ago, is a misjudgement. Surely? Particularly since Mitterrand’s 110 Propositions, having got him elected, notoriously failed him miserably in practice. Two years into his presidency he realised his nationalisation policies were leading France to ruin, increasing unemployment and the national debt. In 1983 he had to devalue the franc and operate the infamous U-turn which alienated millions of his supporters, who still feel betrayed. Surely Royal can’t want to tread that same path? Yet having worked so hard to throw off the heavy-weight “elephants” of the Socialist Party, exactly those people who had worked under Mitterrand, having succeeded in doing that against all odds, her first independent gesture is…..to fall back under Mitterrand’s shadow. It’s a quality I mentioned the other day: seeing the future through the eyes of history, of using history as a small child uses a security blanket. Objectively, Mitterrand was an extremely dubious figure but his shade holds a large part of France in thrall.
What are her 100 propositions? For French readers, Royal’s own site is the best place to see them. Clearly no one can make 100 propositions that are all going to be water-tight – notice she does not call them promises. Generally speaking the smaller the proposition the more sensible it is, and the more likely to be adopted – at least for a while. She wants to prevent the accumulation of mandates – that is, prevent an individual being at the same time a mayor, sitting on the regional council, perhaps being the regional president and being an MP, minister or senator. She also proposes preventing one person or group owning and controlling several branches of the media. She also wants to allow foreigners who have been full-time residents for at least 5 years to vote in local elections, by which she presumably means regional and general (departmental) councils.
Some of the propositions are based on her own experiments in the region over which she resides: people’s juries to watch over elected representatives, participative budgets in local affairs. Anything local, it seems to me, has a greater chance of being adopted.
But most of her propositions are too vague to convince any but the most naive: “To put in place an industrial policy capable of preparing the future and reducing the risk of off-shoring by creating a National Agency of Re-industrialisation.” Or “Reform the State: a euro spent must be a useful euro.” Many were already on the Socialist Party’s programme, wooing the left with promises to scrap last year’s labour reform which helps small business, and with a certain sad inevitability the State must still meddle in the way managers do their job and risk-takers are rewarded: “Companies will be charged a lower rate of tax if profit is ploughed back into the company and a higher rate if the profit is given to share holders.” Exeunt omnes.
She makes a number of guarantees, which almost by definition are untenable non-starters, for example that absolutely everyone will be guaranteed a lifetime’s housing security, or that no young person will be out of work for more than 6 months, or that those made redundant will be kept on 90% of salary, guaranteed by the state for a year. Does that apply to the nefarious bosses to whom José Bové referred, who are “making 300 times the minimum wage”? That is 4.5 million euro a year. Will she pay them 90%?. She also promises to increase the minimum wage, increase pensions and “consolidate the 35-hour week”. I have not read any proposals about reducing France’s colossal debt.
Any candidate faces that unanswerable dilemma: do I thrill the crowd by promising the moon? Or do I remain sensible and perhaps bore? François Bayrou has chosen the second option, refusing to make any promises since he recognises the impossibility of knowing whether he will be able to carry them out. Royal has taken the Sarkozy route: pile up the promises, treat the electorate as suckers. Of course some are; those who are voting for the first time have every right to expect that things will be different. All of us at 18 were certain that it was our generation that would finally change everything, that we were heralds to a new era. Hélas!
February 13th, 2007 at 8:43 am
“Never fight the last war” is the advice Robert Greene gives in his great book “The 33 Strategies of War.” Royal clearly is.
February 14th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Never fight the last war - never try and be like your enemies - whether by playing the “rebel” card (imitating Chirac’s behaviour of attacking your own government for electoral gain because you are too cowardly to own up to increased insecurity and national debt), the “race” card (plagiarising Le Pen’s 2002 slogans, while the anti-immigrant electorate stay with Le Pen and you ruin social cohesion), the “workers” card (citing Blum as a role-model, when Blum successfully introduced progressive rights on working time, while Sarkozy incites the working poor to work even harder, because they’re worth it, and presumably the tax exile rich to continuing paying no tax, because they’re unimportant).
As Segolene realised, learning from the 2002 election wasn’t manipulating the police to slander a colleague (Clearstream) or a rival (RG with Royal), but open democratic debate with the PS’ internal referendum and the primaries. It wasn’t copying Le Pen’s slogans that would get his voters to vote for her, it was listening to the French people of all backgrounds, involving them and valuing that involvement.
First there were criticisms - and perhaps understandably - of the PS for ignoring the manifesto that was agreed by their members. Then there were criticisms that Segolene Royal wasn’t making any proposals. Now, there are criticisms that she isn’t making any promises but instead a similar number of proposals to Mitterand - its not how many proposals, its how they can improve people’s lives. And yes, the PS do focus many proposals on young people - if us young people think we can change everything, isn’t it sensible that we are given the tools to at least try?
Indeed, expectation, doubt and hope summed up people’s minds across France as they waited for the 11th February when Segolene Royal announced the proposals scaled up from the “participative phase” . This phase encompassed 6000 participative debates, 600 000 people contributing local ideas and the 135 000 contributing online ideas during the last four months (while 2.5 million people overall contributed to Desirs d’Avenir since it was created) - less “going into a stall” and more “tour de france” of the collective intelligence of the French.
Expectation, because for once a party actively listened to their needs, their experiences, their ideas, rather than commission opinion polls (the PS know better than anyone that these are irrelevant after 2002!). We know politics is complex, that’s because people’s lives are so let’s not treat them simplistically and superficially and Desirs d’Avenir explored that complexity.
Doubt, because never had a political party (especially stereotyped for being full of intellectuals, rappers and celebs) attributed so much importance to not only listening to people but involving them in refining the manifesto. Doubt for our citizens who are so used to hollow promises, populist narratives and divisive proposals. Doubt for the PS activists themselves who were so used to single narrative, repetitive message, media-driven campaigning. Doubt for the PS barons who may feel they have given their voice away to the people they represent. Doubt for the leadership as participative debates are not soundbite friendly - the PS have lost the media campaign. Unlike Bayrou, the ultimate political bandwagon jumper - who falls in bed with the Right when they win elections and gives them vote of no-confidence when Sarkozy drops far in the polls - then uses traditional soundbite-heavy media stunts (”France profonde” backdrop with local villagers, marquee picnic in the banlieues) to declare war on the biased media, which may be true, but more than anything, they are biased towards the soundbite.
Hope, because we’ve dropped our guard, we’ve all risked our election campaign innovating to involve our citizens to shape how we reform the country, whether as activists, representatives or our leadership. We risked it for our internal referendum on Europe and even if for the leadership, this didn’t bring the Yes to the Constitution they wanted, the party was transformed for the better. Since 2004 we’ve won successive elections, taking 25/26 regions and more than doubled our membership in the space of the last year.
get informed about what people think about how France should be governed (through the participative debates) but also inform people about what the party thinks (the manifesto) and the diversity of opinions within the party (internal referendum and primaries)
get inspired about what ideas and experiences people share at these participative debates but also inspire people about what values and proposals the party believe will help transform the everyday social and democratic fabric of French society
get involved where people are - campaigning for equal opps in the workplace, facilitating local debates in neighbourhoods and on the web - but also involve people where they are - collaborating with unions, web and community activists
Is this really treating the electorate like suckers? Aspiring social democratic parties across Europe should learn more from each other, the French PS have a lot to learn from Labour about policies like Surestart (and a key PS proposal is universal early childcare). Labour have a lot to learn from the PS about winning hearts and minds - as Harriet Harman (http://blog.harrietharman.co.uk) mentions, it needs to drop its guard if it wants to renew (the epetitions is a start). Dropping its guard does neither mean dropping back to either hard-left or centre-right policies, it means involving people in designing the party’s future - whether activists, supporters or the general public.
http://everydaysocialdemocracy.blogspot.com