25 May 2017
“I don’t understand anything anymore.”
Where do French voters now stand: to the Right or to the Left?
by Richard Pooley
It was the afternoon of Monday 15th May. A ceremony was taking place in a sunny Paris outside the Hôtel Matignon, the residence and office of France’s prime minister. The chubby and diminutive Bernard Cazeneuve, the last prime minister under François Hollande, had just handed over to his slim successor, Édouard Philippe, who is some seven inches taller (for younger readers that’s 18 centimetres). The two stood at the bottom of the steps, each with a microphone, and took it in turns to speak to the small and apparently cheerful crowd of civil servants and journalists. Cazeneuve spoke first and said how honoured he had been to have served the French people as both a minister and prime minister in the outgoing Socialist government, one of the most unpopular in French history. They were not idle words. He meant them and said with evident pride, looking defiantly at Philippe: “I’m a man of the Left.” When it was his turn, Philippe immediately referred to this. “You have said that you are a man of the Left. Well, I’m a man of the Right.” The onlookers laughed. He then went on to say how much respect he had for Cazeneuve and many of his Socialist colleagues. After all he had just been appointed by one of Cazeneuve’s old colleagues, Emmanuel Macron. Moreover, the new government would contain people of the Left and of the Right.
The scene reminded me of that classic Frost Report sketch of 1966 where tall “upper class” John Cleese looks disdainfully down on “middle class” Ronnie Barker who sneers at diminutive “lower class” Ronnie Corbett. Except that it was clear that Philippe only looked down at Cazeneuve because of his greater height. His respect for his predecessor was genuine. Both men embraced each other warmly before Cazeneuve was driven away.
I have noticed that while Macron’s party, La République en marche (REM), is described as “centrist” by foreign journalists, the French media seem less willing to use the term. I’ve seen “coalition”, “Left-Right”, “liberal”, simply “new”, and even “co-habitating”, a description usually reserved for those times when a president of one side has to work with a National Assembly in which power lies with the other side.
The French are not used to having a strong centrist political party, let alone one which might be the largest in the National Assembly after next month’s parliamentary elections (universally called les législatives). François Bayrou’s Democratic Movement is centrist but only had two deputies in the outgoing National Assembly, although it may get quite a few more in the next one now that it is allied to Macron’s REM. In France one has always been either “of the Left” or “of the Right”. Will this now change?
It is the French whom we have to thank for the political terms “right” and “left”. Before the French Revolution in 1789 the French king very occasionally sought the advice of the Estates General, a toothless body which represented the three Estates of his realm – the aristocracy, the clergy and the commoners. The latter, the Third Estate, sat to his left. In the early stages of the Revolution, when the king was still present during meetings of the Estates General, his supporters – aristocrats and clergy – sat to his right and those demanding his abdication and the introduction of a republic – mostly middle-class professionals – were on his left. This division continued (and deepened) when the Estates General morphed into the National Constituent Assembly in July 1789 and the king was no longer there. Ever since, those on the “Right” in France have argued for maintaining traditional institutions and having either a constitutional monarch or a monarchical president, while those on the “Left” have sought to devolve as much power as possible to the common people and secularize French society.
A few weeks ago I was discussing the election with two French acquaintances. I took the plunge and asked them who they were going to support in the first round. My bad manners got what they deserved. Both women said they were “of the Left”, though Sylvie, a retired nurse, added that she was “of the Far Left”. I had to guess which of the six candidates “of the Left” each one was going to vote for. I discovered this week who Fabienne, the woman “of the Left” and local shopkeeper, had voted for: Macron. In both rounds. Yet he had not been on my list of six. I have yet to discover whether she is still “of the Left”.
Meanwhile, the disarray inside France’s traditional political parties continues. Only the new ones – REM and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise – appear to be running a normal general election campaign. The standard bearer of those “of the Left” for over a century, the Socialist Party, has split. Many of its current deputies have either joined REM or said that they will support Macron if elected. Some have decided not to stand at all for national office and have returned to their town halls and village mairies. A few are supporting candidates from outside their own party against their own colleagues. Benoît Hamon, for example, the party’s presidential candidate, is hoping the Communist Party candidate will beat ex-Socialist Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, in his constituency south of Paris. And he is also backing Caroline de Haas, one of the advisers to the ex-Socialist Minister for Women. Ms de Haas is standing against Myriam El Khomry, Socialist Labour Minister until two weeks ago. Ms de Haas has become much more widely known since last Sunday when she argued in a newspaper that widening Paris’s pavements would reduce the sexual harassment of women.
And what about the party which has for so long represented those “of the Right”, albeit under many different names and acronyms? In at least a dozen constituencies there are two Republican Party candidates. In one, the 2nd constituency of Paris, there are three Republicans standing – the incumbent Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (known by all as NKM, a minister under Nicolas Sarkozy), Henri Guaino (another Sarkoist) and Jean-Pierre Lecoq (mayor of the 6th arrondisement). As one woman voter said when asked her opinion of this while out shopping in the constituency: “Je ne comprends plus rien.”
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