France's neoliberal monarchy

AndAnd now, with the publication of former 'First Lady' Valérie Trierweiler's book 'Merci pour ce moment' ('Thank you for this moment'), we have the secrets of the boudoir! This completes the long political sequence - one starting to look rather like a descent into hell - that began with the first meeting of government ministers after the summer break on August 20th. In this frantic period François Hollande’s presidency - the third occasion on which the Left has held power under France's Fifth Republic - has been refashioned from top to bottom. The secrets of the boudoir, the president’s loves, the intimate affairs of a couple; private life and public life are all quite openly lumped together. Nicolas Sarkozy ostentatiously took part in the public display of such private matters: it played a role in his defeat in 2012 and people's rejection of him as a person.

This same trap is now closing around François Hollande, who himself fully bought into these monarchical institutions under which the king lives and reigns in his Elysée palace with his court and courtesans. He could, from the outset, have broken with this appalling practice – Charles de Gaulle never had anything to do with it – but instead chose to adopt wholesale his predecessor's inheritance. See this article by Mediapart's editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel on the issue. As François Hollande wanted Valérie Trierweiler to be called France's 'First Lady' (that is how the Elysée's website presented her and related her activities, the presidency having given her an office and staff) he knowingly exposed himself to the risk that he, as a private individual, would be laid bare and that his “miserable little pile of secrets”(1) would enter public debate and become a political event.

Judging Valérie Trierweiler's intentions, real or supposed, gauging her sincerity or her settling of old scores, or even the truth of the facts related, are not of any interest here, except to feed the mediocrity of a TV reality show which engulfs us in the squalid absurdity of intimate revelations. Let us simply consider the political effects of this book (whose title, 'Merci pour ce moment', is worthy of French novelist Marc Lévy...), which are devastating. For three reasons.

First of all, because of what the head of state's former partner claims in the book. There would be no reason to be interested in the book or give it the slightest credibility if the comments in it did not complement and confirm what has already been said by others about François Hollande. His indifference, his insincerity - even lies - his distance and opportunistic calculations, his secretiveness: that is also – and here we are talking about political conduct – what politicians, ministers sacked last March when Jean-Marc Ayrault was replaced as prime minister and former staff at the Elysée have written and said. So, too, has another former minister, Cécile Duflot, in her recent book 'De l'intérieur voyage au pays de la désillusion' ('From the Inside, Journey to the Land of Disillusion').

One would prefer not to care about and, above all, not to know of the head of state's private conduct if this behaviour did not tally with some of his public conduct in another realm - one that involves public opinion and in particular the electorate of the Left and their representatives. From petty bourgeois adulterer, a stock figure in down-market vaudeville entertainment that one would happily ignore, the buzz created around this book - because its publication comes at a decisive moment in the president’s term of office – leads us somewhere else entirely, towards major political questions that touch on the practice of power, institutions, democratic control and the sincerity of public pronouncements.

The man who, as a presidential candidate, repeatedly (2) stated how he would behave when in office has not respected his main commitments, the first being that he would be a 'normal president'. Familiar with the criticisms of its institutions, and a great connoisseur of the follies of the Fifth Republic and of its rootless and out-of-control presidency, François Hollande has chosen from start to finish to use all its finery and its levers of influence, to the point where he has bloated still further the office of president, which is itself the main driving force behind the deep crisis of legitimacy affecting the nation's political representatives. The 'Trierweiler accident' reminds us that it was he who decided to keep the function of 'First Lady', one which is, happily, non-existent in all other European democracies (who is Mr Merkel? The German chancellor Angela Merkel has always been careful to keep her private life separate).

It could have been just a footnote, yet this initial decision to keep the status of First Lady was a prelude to many other decisions which all fitted alongside the same practice of making full use of the institutions of the presidency. Thus nothing changed when it came to nominating people to key posts in French society, the president’s most important power. François Hollande has rewarded those close to him – veteran former minister Jack Lang was appointed president of the Arab World Institute in Paris in January 2013 – with his own wishes enough to trample over the opinions of his parliamentary majority. This was seen over the recent controversial appointment of right-wing former minister Jacques Toubon as France's human rights ombudsman, the Défenseur des droits. And nothing has changed when it comes to using all of the state's constitutional resources that underpin the concentration of powers.

François Hollande decided alone, without consultation or a parliamentary debate or vote, to start two wars - in Mali and the Central African Republic. He also wanted to start a third without consultation, by bombarding Syria. And acting alone, too, he chose to give up on renegotiating the European treaty known as the Fiscal Pact, with his MPs having to vote the original treaty through a few weeks later with a political pistol held to their heads. And he alone took the decision, without any government or parliamentary consultation, to carry out the major policy shift of his presidency by announcing in January the launch of the now well-known 'responsibility pact' with employers.

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1. The author is quoting the famous line from the French writer and statesman André Malraux: “What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.” In the original it is: “Qu'est ce qu'un homme? Un misérable petit tas de secrets.”

 2. The author is referring to the expression “Moi président” literally “Me, president” or “Me as president”, that François Hollande repeatedly used in a televised debate with his opponent Nicolas Sarkozy on May 2nd, 2012. Hollande reeled off a list of 15 commitments, beginning each of them with the phrase “Moi président de la République...”, with the “Moi président” understood as an abbreviation of “Moi si je suis président” or “If I am president....”. The phrase has stuck in political journalism and discourse, and is now sometimes used against the president.

The brutal switch to neoliberalism

So, we have a monarchical presidency. Nothing much new there, one might argue. But on the contrary, it is an astonishing development if one cares to remember that Hollande was elected as the president of the Left, and even of different left-wing strands, given that they called on people to vote for him. This is a Left which, in its admittedly incomplete inventory of the years when François Mitterrand was France's first socialist president (1981 to 1995), puts that presidency's monarchical tendencies firmly in the debit column. (Ironically, Mitterrand himself had famously warned that the Fifth Republic was created as a “permanent coup d'état”.) This is a Left which for many years has undergone a critical debate on the dangers of the Fifth Republic's institutions and the need to evolve or move quickly towards a Sixth Republic. And this with just one objective in mind: to end this overblown role of the head of state who, as a by-product of their actions, give legitimacy to the authoritarian and anti-democratic visions of the far-right Front National.

To the surprise at having a monarchical presidency, of which Valerie Trierweiler's book claims to describe some of the symptoms, one can add the astonishment that has gripped a large section of public opinion – and not just the Socialist Party – faced with the scale and brutality of the change of political direction displayed over the last three weeks. Only in France, where the head of state is safe inside his Elysée dungeon, could such a change of course occur without the need to engage in a process of mediation – consultations, debates, explanations – and the need to seek fresh legitimacy, whether from the voters, the ruling party or Parliament. That was the case for British politician Tony Blair and his 'third way', and for Germany's Gerhard Schroeder and his Agenda 2010. Even in government, the two men lasted not by simply explaining what they had done after the fact, but by arguing the case and winning majorities for ideas in advance.

The monarchical president has thus decided to free himself of all obstacles. His campaign commitments, his initial political programme, the party which elected him as candidate, his parliamentary majority and the bulk of the voters who chose him have all been jettisoned at the start of this new political year. The institutional powers of the system enable the presidency to bring parliamentarians into line – Valls' second government will meet no resistance in getting parliamentary approval of its policies in a vote on September 16th. The same applies to the Socialist Party itself. “I need a party that is in agreement with what I propose,” Hollande said at the end of August. As for the voters, they will not be called on to give their verdict until 2017, when they will be threatened with the possibility of the Front National gaining power.

“I am and remain a social democrat,” said Hollande recently, against all evidence to the contrary. The media asks: is he really a social liberal? Actually no, and if nothing else the last few days have at least allowed for some clarity over the true nature of the new political course that is being pursued. “Valls is a liberal conservative,” wrote Philippe Marlière, professor of French and European politics at University College, London, on his Mediapart blog. Earlier this year Marlière launched a political club called 'Les socialistes affligés' ('Distressed socialists'). Academic Jean-François Bayart, director of research at the French centre for scientific research the CNRS, meanwhile says that the government has not broken with the “national liberalism” of the past.

The government's policy has, quite abruptly, now just shown itself to be simply neoliberal. And the new Valls government has announced this change very clearly by tearing down several pillars of what is, traditionally, a left-wing government's normal programme.

First of all, there is the 35-hour working week and the process of reducing working time, which is now disparaged by Emmanuel Macron, the brilliant investment banker who has no political legitimacy other than having been chosen by this monarchic president to occupy the position of minister of the economy. All these old dogmas apparently weary the new minister. “There will therefore be difficult moments with the history of the Left because that means re-thinking past certitudes which are, to my eyes, dead stars,” he told Mediapart in an interview just last year.

Then there is the wider deregulation of the world of work under the pretext of attacking the (very real) privileges of some protected professions.

Then there is the issue of working on Sundays and the claimed urgent need to liberalise the law: thus sweeping away years of struggle by unions and declarations and commitments by the Socialist Party.

Then there are the suggested reforms of regulations which control what sized companies should be governed by which set of workplace rules, changes which would have major implications for worker representation in those firms affected. Here, again, the deregulation envisaged would be an appalling prospect for unions and for the Left.

Then there is the abandonment of rent controls announced with some fanfare by Manuel Valls. Apart from being a slap in the face to former housing minister Cécile Duflot who drew up the law that introduced the controls – a law that was voted through unanimously by the Left – this move also represents the abandonment of a constant demand made by socialists. The adoption of the legislation known as the loi Mermaz, which sought to control increases in tenants' rents, was one of the great parliamentary battles of the late 1980s.

And then there was the announcement that the unemployed face greater checks to see that they are really looking for work, thus in an indirect way resurrecting an old theme loved by the Right – a crackdown on fraudsters and people on benefits.

“[There needs to be] a rethink of one of the Left’s reflexes, according to which a company is the place of class warfare and a profound misalignment of interests,” Macron told Mediapart last year. “I love business,” Manuel Valls told the employers' federation Medef in late August, without even mentioning the workers who keep firms going. These are two classic examples of hymns to neoliberalism, and which are usually sung by the classical Right. And we can be sure others will follow, so impatient is Manuel Valls to turn the page on what he called, when he was a candidate in the socialist primary election in 2011, the “socialism of the 19th and 20th century”.

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The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter