Being President of France isn’t a bad job. You get to live in a rather smart palace in a rather smart arrondissement of Paris.
You get to see the world at the French taxpayer’s expense, and be driven around with outriders. If you are really lucky, you even get to marry a supermodel: though you can bet that will not happen to Martine Aubry or Ségolène Royal should either of them find themselves as the republic’s first citizen in May 2012.
Such a consideration may be academic, for the way things are going in the Parti Socialiste neither of them need start to measure up the curtains. French socialists were under the impression that it would not be until next May or June that any candidates for the socialist nomination would formally declare: but Mme Royal, soundly defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, decided to ignore such niceties and declared at the beginning of December that she would be entering
the primaries for her party next autumn.
Her decision was interpreted as signifying two other things: that Mme Aubry, the stultifyingly dull leader of the PS, was simply not taken seriously by one of her most senior colleagues and had no control over how her party behaved; and
that the king over the water, Domnique Strauss-Kahn, had better make his mind up quickly about whether or not he plans to stand.
Mr Strauss-Kahn (or DSK, as the French media call him) used to be a finance minister, but currently runs the International Monetary Fund in America, and by general agreement has made rather a good job of it. So amazed are the French that any of them, especially a former finance minister, can make a decent fist of dealing with large sums of money that his popularity as a potential PS presidential candidate has rocketed.
Also, this is helped by the fact that he is not Mme Royal or Mme Aubry, who are widely seen (even by their own party) as tired old leftists with nothing new to offer France or its people.
They, in their turn, as well as loathing each other (despite occasional elaborate public pretences to the contrary) also loathe DSK with a passion. This is only partly because of his apparently obvious ability to beat either of them hollow should he chose to stand against them in the primaries. It is also for the more charming reason that they have an ideological disagreement with him. DSK may be an old lefty himself, but he has learnt a thing or two about how economies really work since he went off to the IMF.
Mme Royal and Mme Aubry detest him for his born-again belief in the superiority of market. They will not recognise, or admit, that that it is very belief that has made him so successful at the IMF, and of which France has had enough.
An opinion poll showed that, if DSK were to stand against President Sarkozy in the 2012 election, he would win with a massive 62 per cent of the vote. By French standards, that is not so much a victory as an obliteration. If Mme Royal were to stand against the incumbent, she would just scrape home.
Of course, mid-term polling means nothing. President Sarkozy, however disastrous or absurd he may sometimes seem (and may seem still further between now and the election), is likely to pick up support.
Incumbents almost always do, as their tribal supporters, who can afford the luxury of refusing to back him in an opinion poll, are made to understand what their duty is when election day itself comes. So this probably means that DSK would beat M Sarkozy by the sort of margin the latter had when he defeated Mme Royal in 2007 – 53 to 47 – but that Mme Royal (or Mme Aubry for that matter) would give the incumbent a free pass home to the Élysée Palace again.
Europe, and particularly Europe’s financial system, is in a turbulent state at the moment. Germany is once more calling the shots in trying to rescue the euro, for the simple reason that only it has the economic clout to do so. Had
France been less wedded to consensual economic policies for the past 30 or so years, and more interested in market solutions in the way that Germany has, then things might be different.
However, France’s relative weakness to Germany is exactly because it has taken the sort of view on economics that finds favour with the likes of Mme Royal and Mme Aubry, and not that practised by DSK. Mme Aubry herself was the architect, during the Jospin government, of the 35-hour law that prevents employees for working for longer than that each week.
This has meant that France, for the most part, fights its economic battles with one hand tied behind its back. The French have had enough of this, which would suggest that choosing either Mme Royal or Mme Aubry as PS candidate next time is simply to invite five more years of President Sarkozy.
DSK has his difficulties, too. He has a reputation as a womaniser that does not, as one may have thought, play very well with French voters. He took his hobby with him to the US and managed to make a laughing stock of himself, and to an extent his country, for this stereotypical behaviour.
However, the PS’s primaries are not to be open just to card-carrying members to vote in. Anyone judged to be sympathetic can pay a euro and have a vote. This is deemed to favour DSK, who needs more than just old paidup lefties if he is to win. If he were to choose not to fight, he would probably be passing up the chance of a lifetime.
Simon Heffer is associate editor of The Daily Telegraph
