promises promises...europe on line
There is a common adage that all political careers end in failure. One such politician facing such a prospect this week is French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. After the first round of elections, the incumbent found himself in second position behind Francois Hollande from the Socialist Party. The two men will now face a run-off on 6 May, the same day as elections in Greece. The future direction of the European Union, and in particular the single currency, will, in different ways, be an issue at the polls.
Sarkozy is being routinely written off. Predictions are that he will suffer a second round defeat at the hands of Hollande, and bow out of front line politics, as he has suggested he will should he be unsuccessful this time around. But Sarkozy is not likely to go down without a fight, and already the doom-laden forecasts are being revised. Victory for Hollande may not be so emphatic after all.
Secondary to the political obituaries, but of more lasting importance to Europe, is the realisation that the far right in France is gaining political support. Marine Le Pen, candidate for the National Front (FN), scored almost 20% of the vote, despite the obvious efforts of Sarkozy to court her support base with overtures of his own. Furthermore, following the declaration of results on 22 April both Sarkozy and Hollande now seem content to benefit from the now-displaced right-wing vote in the second round.
Both candidates in the 6 May poll have let the far-right hijack the agenda. The far-right will also be campaigning in Greece, as they have, with a certain degree of success, in the Netherlands – whose government recently fell after the right-wing Freedom party withdrew its support for the ruling coalition – Austria, Denmark, Finland and Hungary. The failure of Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande is not that they are willing to court the right, but that they did not confront the right head-on. Theirs is the failure of politics, the fear of ideas. The mainstream is running scared, and the National Front now has decent support to build upon for the parliamentary elections. It wasn’t sufficiently challenged in one election, it can be assumed it won’t again.
As Sajid Karim writes in New Europe, “The next French President may not work with Le Pen but he will have to listen to her. She’s not quite a winner but she is a kingmaker. And that is worrying. The far right is on the march”. As he points out, ten leaders and six governments have fallen since the start off the economic crisis. That’s a lot of discontent. If not properly challenged, it will undoubtedly continue to grow.
Talking about immigration, for example, does not make one a racist, but the easy option allowing racist rhetoric to dominate the agenda for electoral victory (promises on the campaign trail are always broad and can be retracted) amounts not only to a political failure, but a moral one too, setting-up further problems for the next election, and the one after that. The decline in what might be termed mainstream voters turning out to vote has no doubt had an effect on political discourse, but politicians need to engage with and expand the voter base, not just calculate what percentage of the vote will be turned on by the latest sweeping statement.
It is true that all political careers end in failure. Some political lives, too.
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