Ségolène Royal is trailing in the presidential race amid tax evasion claims and disarray in the Socialist Party, writes Lara Marlowein Paris
These are difficult days for the French Socialist Party. For more than six months, its presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, was tied for first place or led opinion polls. This week, she fell to 48 per cent against 52 per cent for Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate.
Arnaud Montebourg, Royal's spokesman, was asked what was her greatest handicap in the campaign. "Hollande," he replied, referring to Royal's partner of 25 years and the father of her four children, François Hollande - who is also leader of the Socialist Party. Royal suspended Montebourg for one month.
Also this week, Royal and Hollande filed a lawsuit against a right-wing deputy in the National Assembly who alleged they evaded the ISF (wealth tax). The couple made public their property holdings, and most other candidates followed suit.
The French disdain for wealth became a campaign issue. Nicolas Beytout, editor of Le Figaro, noted that Hollande has said: "I don't like rich people." Royal told a British newspaper she wanted to "terrify the capitalists" and refused to attend a symposium in Deauville because it was "a rich people's town".
The disarray on the left this week - personal rivalries, unresolved ideological differences and deeply ingrained distrust of capitalism - are described in a book entitled The Taboos of the Left, published this month by Renaud Dély, editor-in-chief and editorialist for the left-wing newspaper Libération.
Dély describes himself as a left-wing voter. But he has despaired of the French Socialist Party seriously embracing reform or "assuming a social democratic, open, modern identity". The Socialists' arrogance and delusions collided with the real world, Dély says, on the night of April 21st, 2002, when the extreme right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen beat the Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin to the presidential run-off.
The constitutional treaty referendum of May 29th, 2005, should have been a further warning. Though the party leadership advocated a Yes vote, 60 per cent of Socialists voted No.
The party lives in the past and has failed to understand that ideology rooted in the 1917 Russian revolution and belief in the post- second World War welfare state need serious revision. "Fifty years after Khrushchev's report on the crimes of Stalin, 17 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 15 years after the dissolution of the Soviet empire, Marxism and its distant followers still encumber the conscience of the French left," Dély writes.
France is the only country in the world where Trotskyist candidates recently won more than 10 per cent of the vote, on April 21st, 2002. The messianic, radical branch of the Socialist Party that opposed the European constitutional treaty is led by Laurent Fabius, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Henri Emmanuelli.
Though this "pure" strain is estimated to represent 28 per cent of the French left, at every defeat, they make the others feel guilty, telling them that if the Socialists lost, it's because they were not left-wing enough.
The further left a Socialist is, the more authentic he feels. The Socialists have propagated two lies about Europe, Dély says: (1) That the "French model" is unique and superior to all others; (2) That European integration will one day extend the "French model" to the rest of the continent. Rather than systematically defending French interests within Europe, the Socialists ought to build a supra-national European party. Had they done so, he adds, they might have accomplished something in 1997-2000, when 11 of 15 European governments were social democratic.
Dély also criticises the French Socialists for their pessimistic line on globalisation. They ought to be able to look beyond their own frontiers and see that globalisation has improved life in India, China and southeast Asia.
French Socialists have been quick to embrace trendy causes, including opposition to genetically-modified organisms, ecology, gay marriage and the anti-globalisation movement, Dély says. But they have failed to define clear policies on crime, Europe, relations with the Muslim world and the US.
In 10 years as Socialist leader, François Hollande "has turned non-decision into a fine art", Dély writes, blaming Hollande for "the intellectual blackout that froze the Socialists outside reality".
Dély is only slightly more charitable towards Royal, whom he describes as an unknown commodity. He mocks her credo of "participative democracy - 'What do you think? I agree!' - this is the strange method for drawing up a programme so interactive that it's empty and hollow . . . Ségolène, Madonna of the opinion polls, and good news candidate".
Even if Royal wins in May, the Socialists cannot last long in power, Dély predicts. Their politicians "will not lead the French left to the promised land, which remains, for them, terra incognita: the real world."