When politicians were preparing for the the 2007 French presidential election, the memories of the previous poll five years earlier were still fresh in the memory. That was when the cosy automatic Left-Right revolving door of power at the summit of the French state had been rudely interrupted by far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen making it through to the second round instead of the socialist contender Lionel Jospin. Until then the changeover of power between the two sides had taken place with smooth regularity. The Socialist Party (PS) had won the presidential election in 1981, the centre-right had won Parliamentary elections in 1986, the PS had retained the Elysée in 1988, the centre-right headed the Parliamentary polls in 1993 and then followed this up with the Elysée in 1995, before the Left took back control of the French Parliament in 1998.
Then Le Pen and his Front National put a spanner in the works in the 2002 presidential election. In the second round of the election right-wing Jacques Chirac was elected overwhelmingly against the veteran far-right politician and was supposed to govern for the whole nation as a result. But he ended up ruling for the narrow band of 20% or so who had voted for him in the first round.
As the election clock ticked around to 2007, therefore, there was already a mood in which a restless population seemed keen to rid itself both of received political wisdom and some political figures. In 2005, for example, the French people had voted no in a referendum to a proposed constitution for the EU, and in 2006 there were street protests over plans under Chirac to make the hiring – and firing – of young workers easier. Yet Nicolas Sarkozy, who though he was a clear inheritor of the established Left-Right system of power swapping, and though he had been an elected representative for 25 years and a minister for a good deal of that time, managed to paint himself as a candidate for change when he stood in the 2007 election. It was true that he managed to break with “Father Chirac” and the latter's unelected prime minister Dominique de Villepin, whom Sarkozy cordially detested.
Opposite Sarkozy was a 'Madonna', Ségolène Royal, who in time-honoured fashion caused chaos inside the PS, from whom she intended to break in her own, improvised manner. She launched her attack in a primary election which enraged the party's grandees, became the presidential candidate and promised a grand clearing out if she got elected.
The third character in the 2007 electoral drama was the unlikely figure of François Bayrou. He was the president of the centrist UDF party who had managed just 6.8% of the votes in the 2002 poll and who harboured what was under France's Fifth Republic an unthinkable ambition to be a centrist president. Inhabiting the political centre, independent of the Right and the Left, was a form of political heresy. For the Fifth Republic was not designed for a ménage à trois but for a dialogue of the deaf. “Between us and the communists there's nothing,” the acclaimed writer and minister under Charles de Gaulle, André Malraux, once said, in the days before the Socialist Party gained the upper hand over their rivals on the Left and helped François Mitterrand into the Elysée in 1981. There was simply no place in French politics for the third way, a stance that President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing once dreamt of before coming up against his rival on the Right Jacques Chirac. It was also hard for Bayrou to force the hand of destiny when so many of the leading figures in the UDF were limited in their hunger for independence by a desire for prominent positions which they cadged off the traditional Right.
Indeed, François Bayrou amused the French political world with his battalion of UDF elected representatives who had little hesitation in leaving him in favour of good seats and ministerial posts, and people looked down their noses at his candidacy.
But 2007 was a distinctive year, full of anger, even rebellion in the country's suburbs, and Bayrou's rise started to unnerve the system and divide the Socialist Party, a little like 2017 when a part of the PS split off to support Macron. There was the setting up of the think tank Gracques, which was nominally of the Left but which was tempted by social liberalism and which praised Bayrou (and which now backs Macron). There was the example of former socialist prime minister Michel Rocard who officially supported Ségolène Royal while shifting his gaze towards the centre. And there were former ministers who, having rejected Royal and favoured Bayrou, ended up with Sarkozy when the conservative went through to the second round. The uncertainty and turmoil weakened Royal and strengthened Sarkozy's stance as a rebel who was open to 'big tent' politics and politicians of different political hues. But it also propelled Bayrou to such levels of support that the question arose as to whether he could overtake the socialist candidate and make it through to the second round.
We now know the end of the story, or in fact, as it transpires, the beginning of it. In the first round in 2007 François Bayrou picked up a creditable 18.5% of the vote but missed out on the second round, squeezed out by a system which forced a bipolar choice between Left and Right. France, divided into three pieces, decided to hand power to the largest of these, Nicolas Sarkozy, who went on to become president.
In 2012 the voters decided to give power to the group that had come second five years earlier, the Socialist Party. François Hollande got the keys to the Elysée and after a left-leaning campaign governed to the right.
The third act of the drama took place on Sunday April 23rd when, just before the first results were announced showing Macron would qualify in lead position for the second round, his supporter François Bayrou remarked: “My twenty-year struggle has reached its fulfilment.” The French people had indeed just voted for the political line put forward by the third man in 2007. Having tried first Sarkozy then Royal's former partner François Hollande, the voters had turned to Bayrou's political associate Macron.
Nonetheless, the revenge offered up by one evening's election results should not be allowed to eclipse the march of history. Many things have changed in the last ten years. The Socialist Party has collapsed, overtaken by radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who picked up 19% of the vote last weekend. The far-right Front National attracted a 10% share of the vote in 2007 and on Sunday they picked up just over twice that, while the Right under François Fillon has reverted to the traditionalist right it was before the events of May 1968.
The problem is that the wheel has turned. These have become violent and dangerous times. Politically the centre has indeed seized power, which is a form of revolution under France's Fifth Republic but the leader of this movement is an uncertain figure. Who is he, what does he represent, what Parliamentary majority will he have after June's legislative elections, and does he have the necessary plan and charisma to see the job through?
François Bayrou may have got his revenge on events in 2007 but the above questions remain. Will Emmanuel Macron be up to the challenges that await him? No one can be sure if his likely victory on May 7th will be the end of one story or the start of another.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter