After two years of compromise, France’s President Normal has met his moment of truth, writes Jonathan Fenby in The Financial Times.
The stand-off between François Hollande, the Socialist head of state, and the left wing of his own party that erupted at the weekend, resulting in the purging of anti-austerity leftwingers from the government, has ramifications stretching far beyond the immediate confrontation. These will have significant implications both for the way France is run and for Europe. There is a distinct possibility of a period of chaos, reflecting the deep concerns at the root of the morosité under which the EU’s second state is labouring.
The catalyst was in itself no great surprise. Arnaud Montebourg, the outspoken leftwing economy minister, said in a speech and newspaper interview that conformism was an enemy and “my enemy is governing”. He added: “France is a free country which shouldn’t be aligning itself with the obsessions of the German right,” and called for “just and sane resistance”. He has followed an anti-German, anti-austerity line since the 2012 presidential election. As Mr Hollande has moderated the reflationary, high-tax measures on which he was elected, his minister has looked increasingly out of step. But when Mr Hollande appointed centre-left Manuel Valls as his prime minister in March after catastrophic local elections, Mr Montebourg was promoted along with his ally, Benoît Hamon, the education minister.
This was typical of Mr Hollande, who spent much of his career as a backroom party manager. For all the institutional power of his office, he is weaker than predecessors because, unlike them, he is a creature of his party rather than having moulded it to do what he wants. He is an accidental president who got where he is because of the scandal that enveloped Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who would otherwise have been the natural Socialist candidate in 2012.
Mr Valls is popular in the country – and a president with an approval rating below 20 per cent needs all the help he can get. But the Socialist ranks see him as dangerously social democratic and an advocate of tough law and order of a piece with the left’s bête noire, former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr Montebourg’s anti-capitalist, anti-German rhetoric, meanwhile, goes down well with party members and backbenchers in the National Assembly.
Now, Mr Montebourg has thrown down the gauntlet and Mr Hollande has to react if he is not to lose all credibility. He has told Mr Valls to form a government “consistent with the direction set for the country”. That means cutting the budget deficit and easing taxes on business to inject some life into the flatlining economy, cutting double-digit unemployment and getting to grips with structural factors that make France uncompetitive.
It is an agenda administrations of left and right have put off since the collapse of the race for growth under François Mitterrand in the 1980s, when Mr Hollande was a government adviser. The stakes are heightened by the political environment that has deteriorated to the point where some ask whether the Fifth Republic founded in 1958 can still function.
Mr Valls will form a cabinet of like-minded politicians, possibly reaching beyond Socialist ranks. That, and a rebellion by Mr Montebourg and ministers of his stripe claiming to represent true socialism, could split the party, costing it its parliamentary majority.
Read more of this article from The Financial Times.