Ségolène Royal has seen the light; she is returning to the roots of her popularity, going back to the mass of French people who want something different. Last year she literally swept to victory in the Socialist Party primaries because she tapped into the grassroots. Virtually unknown in a party dominated by heavy-weights like Fabius, Strauss-Kahn, Lang and even the retired Jospin, she used the internet intelligently and built on her experiments in participative budgeting in the region of which she is president, the Poitou-Charentes. She promised a break with the past. Thousands joined the Socialist Party specifically so they could vote for her in the primaries, and with their help she crushed the party elephants, who had not minced their dislike, or disgust towards her “half-baked” policies. Then she seemed to flatten out. Worried, she felt she needed the rock of socialist support, so she went back to the same elephants who had rubbished her and whom she had soundly beaten. General consternation from those who thought they saw in her a breath of fresh air, not more of Mitterrand, whose sole lasting legacy, according to left-leaning editorialists on the tenth anniversary of his death, is that he became president. So far he is the only socialist president in 49 years of the 5th Republic.

So it is with great relief that Royal has begun declaring that she is a free woman, her ideas are her own, and she has started talking again about people’s juries, the internet and those policy elements which put her on the electoral map in the first place. However flakey they may seem, they at least correspond with what her supporters want. She is now talking once again about having a 6th Republic - Arnaud Montebourg’s idea. But in doing this she is walking away from the Party, who admit in the press they had no idea she was going to bring that issue back on to the agenda. This morning they are all starting the old carping. They have support in their criticism from the party’s former advisor on economic affairs, Eric Besson, who suddenly resigned in February because Royal was taking too many liberties, announcing policies which had not been discussed or even mentioned in the all-important committees. His book, Que Connait Madame Royal? is full of quietly administered vitriol, he gives succinct extracts in an interview with Le Monde . His principal criticism is that she is interested only in herself.

But far more interesting to outsiders like myself is this underlying desire amongst the French voter to break the established pattern. In itself their search for something new is not new. Since 1981 no government has been re-elected, in other words the electorate try something, find they don’t like it, and vote against next time. They chop and change, rejecting everything they know: in the first round of the last presidential election, Jacques Chirac, who they knew only too well, did not even get 20% of the vote - that means just 14% of French adults. Whereas the marginal candidats, lumped together, beat him with 29.64%.  But of course, they were not lumped together.

Is the underlying reason for this the pensée unique? The feeling that the people who govern France all say more or less the same thing? That is certainly Le Pen’s view, and to an extent Bayrou’s; It used to be Royal’s, and maybe she is coming back to it. The old chestnut that the leaders of France, both in government and in industry, left and right, have all been through the same, very narrow school, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. That certainly seems to explain Bayrou’s immediate rise in popularity when, last September, he started having a go at the French media for the way they don’t give air-time to anyone except their own. This popular desire for change, and at the same time to bust things open like the press and the elite, shows the revolutionary spirit is still alive in France. Ségolène Royal seems to have re-understood that, and quite rightly she is using the internet as the vehicle to build on that spirit of revolt. Those who doubt the influence of the web in the campaign can, as always, go to Thierry Crouzet’s blog. It is this element of the unknown, the ever present risk of something quite unexpected (April 2002, May 2005) which makes this election particularly fascinating to follow: it is an unfolding narrative without an author. We all know it will end, and quite soon, but no one can say quite how.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 8:51 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.