French left has to move on from 1946 or it’s finished | Simon Heffer

A recent poll gave M. Hollande a 4% ap­proval rating, suggesting the average mass murderer would have a better chance of winning. His administration is on the verge of fragmentation, as his prime minister and right-hand man, Manuel Valls, contemplates running. Members of the government who do declare themselves invite accusations of treachery and disloyalty, as Emmanuel Macron, the former finance minister, can testify.

M. Macron’s decision to stand will affect the left-wing vote, even though he has made a point of declaring that he is not himself a socialist. Whenever a socialist president has been elected during the Fifth Republic – Mitterrand in 1981 and 1988, and M. Hollande in 2012 – it has been with the help of voters who would never normally consider themselves leftists, but who lack a centrist candidate in whom they can have confidence. It would be a brave punter who backed M. Macron to reach the second round run-off, but by standing at all he will reduce the chances, already slim, of an orthodox leftist getting into the final. M. Macron is certain to attract the support of some who would hold their noses and vote for a leftist candidate in most other circumstances.

But even before he announced his long- expected candidature, the wheels were off the Parti Socialiste to such an extent that it looked impossible for it to aspire to the run-off. The President has in the past set targets about growth and unemployment that the French economy has to meet if he is to offer himself for a second term.

Thanks largely to the sclerotic, over-regulated fashion in which he allows that economy to be run – having demonstrated a stubborn refusal to undertake structural reform that was one of the causes of M. Macron walking out – none of those targets is near being met and only a miracle could change that between now and when M. Hollande must submit himself. His has been an inglorious presidency. If he can summon up the self-knowledge, an early decision to retire from front-line politics would save that presidency, and its incumbent, from suffering a most inglorious end.

M. Valls lacks the personal unpopularity inflicted on M. Hollande, but his own aspirations have a posthumous feel: he has tried his best to undo some of the doctrinaire socialism that did such damage to
his party’s standing. He is nonetheless closely associated with failure and has, as yet, had nothing to say to the French people that would cause them to conclude that he does not simply offer more of the same.
Two other prominent leftists, Arnaud Montebourg and Benoît Hamon, have a knot of supporters on the left backing their respective claims; neither has a fraction of the originality or perception of M. Macron. Sounding like a right-winger, he has blamed France’s inequalities on the vested interests to which the PS makes a point of appealing, notably trade unions and the long-term employed, on whose behalf they motivate themselves and who have been in the forefront of blocking any whiff of reform.

The French left are demoralised by the last four-and-half years of failure, by their appalling unpopularity and by the erosion of support not just for personalities, but for their policies. To add insult to injury M. Macron has castigated his former colleagues on the left for their fetishisation of the 35-hour week, with the brake it puts on enterprise, productivity and on people who wish to work harder.
The French left has ceased to function as a government: but some even think it is on the verge of being unable to function as an Opposition. M. Valls, in his own version of Project Fear, has warned that Marine Le Pen could well become the next president of France. Following Donald Trump’s victory and the Brexit vote only a fool would today rule out anything in western politics, particularly when it entails talking down the chances of a populist candidate.

It is probably safe to say that the worst that can happen to Mme Le Pen next May is that she will come second; and it is likely to be a far closer second than her father managed against Jacques Chirac in 2002. It will make her, effectively, the leader of the Opposition to a Républicains president – pushing the socialists into a position from which they may find it hard to be a serious challenger in 2022.
The problem the French left has is that it likes to pretend it is still 1946. To it, globalisation has not happened. They reject and ridicule what they call ‘Anglo-Saxon economics’ even though they are the policies that have delivered a far higher growth rate and lower unemployment to so many of France’s competitors.

Despised though Tony Blair is in Britain, he made his party electable and did so by abandoning socialist dogma and embracing capitalism.
In terms of France, that means a leftist party that understands how it is harming working-class people by denying them job opportunities, thanks to the difficulties imposed by the Code du Travail on the business of actually sacking anyone.

France is angry with its existing leftist government, partly for this reason, partly because they feel it has been soft on terrorism and security, partly because they resent policies imposed on it by Brussels and Frankfurt. If the PS chooses to live in a parallel universe where it is not prepared to address these issues radically, then it is finished.

Simon Heffer is also a columnist for theDaily and Sunday Telegraphs