France: Manuel Valls as Prime Minister - Implications

Interview

The outcome of the recent municipal elections in France has confirmed the Socialists’ declining popularity and the rise of the extreme right National Front Party. What sort of developments can we expect on the French political scene? What will François Hollande do to salvage his ratings? We asked for comments from Dr. Eugenia Obichkina, Professor of the Chair of International Relations and Foreign Policy of Russia at the MGIMO University, and RIAC Expert.

Interview

The outcome of the recent municipal elections in France has confirmed the Socialists’ declining popularity and the rise of the extreme right National Front Party. What sort of developments can we expect on the French political scene? What will François Hollande do to salvage his ratings? We asked for comments from Dr. Eugenia Obichkina, Professor of the Chair of International Relations and Foreign Policy of Russia at the MGIMO University, and RIAC Expert.

The municipal elections that France held in late March have confirmed the failure of policies pursued by the Socialists and the declining popularity of the French President, François Hollande. Would you agree that the resignation of the government led by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and the appointment of Manuel Valls are clutching at straws?

When the ruling party loses an election, the prime minister responsible for his government’s policies resigns, as a rule. In a democratic society, elections at any level, from European to municipal, serve as an indicator of the bond between the public and the ruling circles. The decisive ‘no’ that voters gave the ruling party effectively means a vote of non-confidence in the incumbent government and president. The resignation of the prime minister in this context is common practice. /…/ Failure at the election indicates not so much the need for the ruling forces to review their political course, as the inevitability of a reshuffle, after all it would be extremely difficult for the government to change direction.

The Socialists today have scant room for manoeuvre. Now that they are preparing for the next election, they must meet their voters’ expectations. The voters expected that the Socialists would be able to find a way out of the financial and economic crisis, something that had become a national as well as European objective. The Socialist Party’s supporters hoped that the wealthy would pay their way out of the crisis. However, this proved impossible within the framework of the policy implemented by the Social Democrats, something that was demonstrated not only by the current crisis but also by the previous economic crisis of the mid-1970s.

Eugenia Obichkina

This kind of political course is focused, as a rule, on limiting government expenditure and increasing budget revenue by levying super-taxes on high incomes and large accumulated wealth /…/. This hurts the investment environment as capital flees the country. And therefore France will find it increasingly difficult to overcome the crisis via a modernization drive. The Socialists should have factored this in when they were developing their action plan. Numerous observers predicted early on that François Hollande’s policies were doomed to failure, as they were ineffective as anti-crisis measures. Different approaches are required today. It is impossible to combine attempts to modernise the economy in France, ensuring an attractive investment climate, and relying on slogans suggesting that the rich will pay for it all. The Socialists keep falling into the same trap every time there is a crisis because, on the one hand, they have a principled objection to any exceptional measures that ban capital flight, while, on the other, unlike in Northern Europe, France’s business circles are not prepared to voluntarily assume the costs of running a “welfare state,” which they see as encouraging “social parasitism” among society’s less successful members, and are even less open to supporting migrants.

Why Manuel Valls? Will the most extreme right member of the party, as he is often referred to in France, be able to cope?

The appointment of Manuel Valls as Prime Minister was predictable. He is one of the most popular Socialist ministers today because his actions proved so effective. As Minister of the Interior, he pursued policies akin to those once favored by Nicolas Sarkozy in the same capacity. His policies centered on fairly hard measures vis-a-vis immigrants (forced integration into French society, something more common among people on the right) and active countermeasures against drug trafficking and terrorist networks, as well as pursuing law and order in the socially troubled suburbs. Such punitive policies were not always in favor with Valls’s colleagues (he was criticized sharply by Christiane Taubira, the Minister of Justice and proponent of the law on homosexual marriages).

Public opinion, however, was very appreciative of what Valls was trying to do, since his measures touched on themes of personal security, something that concerns all members of the public.

There was another important reason for appointing Manuel Valls to head the Cabinet, since Valls is in fact the most right-wing member of the Socialist Party, while the need for austerity measures to overcome the budget deficit is very much in line with his own understanding of how best to bail out the economy. He names Michel Rocard, the French Prime Minister under François Mitterrand in 1988 – 1991, as his ‘political mentor’. Within the party he was even nicknamed ‘Mr Rocard’ for his allegiance to the American social model which calls for higher individual responsibility for individual economic welfare, in contrast to the European model that shifts this burden to the ‘Welfare State’ (Etat-Providence).

The course favored by Rocard, and probably Valls, aims to revise the government’s and the public’s concept of social expenditure and enhancing individual responsibility for the future, and may prove effective in addressing social parasitism. However, the government faces the very difficult task of overhauling the national mentality, and it would hardly make Valls more popular with those who have been hit hardest by the crisis.

French right-wing parties are gaining popularity, in particular, the National Front of Marine Le Pen, whose political views and proposals contain so much demagoguery and populism. Is this a temporary glitch, given the fatigue that the public may have feel for François Hollande, or are right-wing forces indeed gaining more power?

AP
President Hollande with Manuel Valls, recently
appointed prime minister

One needs to make certain distinctions as far as the right-wing parties go. First, there are right-wing Republicans, such as the UMP, or Union pour un mouvement populaire, a strongly Gaullist party, and the Union for French Democracy (Union pour la Démocratie Française), which is the liberal right wing. These parties are radically different from the National Front both in their key ideological principles and the composition of their electorate.

The advance of right-wing Republican parties reflects a routine shift in the voter sentiments towards the ruling majority. Such parties typically gain in popularity on the wave of disappointment the average voter feels in the Socialists’ policies.

The ultra-right National Front does not belong to the so-called Republican quadrangle. The National Front stands accused of abandoning Republican values, lack of tolerance, and xenophobia, and other political forces abstain from entering into any coalition with the National Front. The National Front’s advance and its growing popularity, winning seats in large southern municipalities, is a very grave signal indeed, and is evidence of a collapse of voter confidence in the parties of the Republican political establishment.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was an activist in Pierre Poujade's UDCA populist party, which in the 1950s and early 1960s was a party mainly involving small-scale craftsmen and shopkeepers, the ‘step-sons’ of the consumer society that favored a U.S. approach, who were also disappointed with the governments of the Fourth Republic that proved unable to save the French Union (i.e. the French Empire).

Most of those who vote for Marine Le Pen, who replaced her father as the National Front’s leader, fundamentally share the same motivation: a similar kind of protest by socially desperate groups against American-led globalization and the same kind of xenophobic suspicions towards immigrants from the former French colonies. While the proportion of people who back xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racism among the French has for a long time remained unchanged at about 15 percent, the extreme right now has gained new followers due to the following two factors: the crisis of the welfare state exacerbated by the two economic crises, and growing insecurity that the public chiefly associates with immigration. The new followers include members of disadvantaged groups who do not expect any improvement in their living conditions from successive left- and right-wing Republic governments. They tend to support the most straightforward recipes in addressing complex national challenges. This is what I believe to lie at the root of the success of Marine Le Pen’s party. She is voted for by people who once voted for the leftist forces. Secondly, there are some who are usually referred to as the ‘bourgeois’ adepts of the “French Civilization Values”, who prefer Christianity, European culture, personal safety and social security to human rights, and protest against the lost harmony, threatened by ‘outsiders’, whether they are the protagonists or step sons of globalization.

How does Jean-Marie Le Pen as a political figure differ from his daughter?

Marine Le Pen is among a new generation of politicians. Like her father, she joined politics very young, was very active in municipal elections, was a municipal councilor, and occupied prominent positions thanks to successful local campaigns. She was also successful in making the agenda more relevant and current. Like her father, she has been actively involved in international affairs and travels a lot. Her criticism of the current government’s foreign policy and of the president has been received well by her supporters. Marine Le Pen should be given credit for being able to imbue the party with this relevance, for her responsiveness to changes in France’s agenda, and she attracts new generations of voters with her vigor. Jean-Marie Le Pen has already become history of the National Front. There is, of course, little difference, in principle and in notion, in the positions favored by father and daughter. Indeed, Marine Le Pen has been very clear about following the party’s original course, which has proved very much in demand on the French political scene.

What other developments can we expect in France’s political life under a new Prime Minister? What will the political scene look like by 2017, when a new presidential election is due?

Blandine LC
Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Front national,
addresses supporters in Paris. May, 2012

France’s political life will inevitably see some serious developments, but this will not be because of the new Prime Minister. The ruling majority is still in power and recent reshuffles are merely rearrangements within the ruling majority. The political landscape will be more clearly formed by the next presidential election, following a rather complex process.

The ruling Socialist Party does not have an obvious, charismatic leader today, and this has serious implications both for the environment inside the party and for its chances of success in the forthcoming election campaigns, most importantly the 2017 presidential election.

There are a number of political figures who could try themselves in that role but they either belong to the right-wing Socialists or side with the left-wing Socialists, and they do not seem to enjoy unanimous support.

The right-wing forces are facing a similar challenge: the lack of a leader. We have recently witnessed intense battles over the position of UMP leader. Jean-François Copé, who was elected its chairman, was hardly the popular choice. The UMP’s former leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, has also started positioning himself as a potential presidential candidate. However, recent scandals surrounding involving him seriously undermine his chances of winning the presidential election. As recent polls suggest, the most popular politician in the UMP Party is Alain Juppé, but he is from an earlier generation of politicians, an important figure but hardly the popular choice. The largest political forces in France today, the UMP and the Socialist Party, are keen to promote younger, promising and vigorous policymakers, not wise old men like Juppé.

As for the new head of the Cabinet, Manuel Valls, he is, on the one hand, relatively young, very vigorous and efficient. On the other hand, he was appointed Prime Minister at a time when France lacks any efficient plan for managing the consequences of the global financial crisis. And since it is the government that will be held responsible for the failure of economic policies, from the point of view of forthcoming presidential election, Valls would have been better staying on as Interior Minister, responsible for domestic security issues, instead of heading the Cabinet.

If the economic developments prove unfavorable, Manuel Valls will become a prime target for criticism of the Cabinet. Even if everything works well, it is the party that will select the presidential candidate, and it does not have to be Valls, who boasts numerous enemies within the party, of which Christiane Taubira is just one.

Since the Socialists are traditionally better disposed to immigrants than the right-wing, voters among the minorities and immigrant communities are expected to continue to support the current government. But the sentiments and attitudes in society will continue to diverge, and one cannot rule out altogether that the most momentous changes in French society will have nothing to do with government reshuffles.

If everything turns out badly, Valls will either have to resign or, if he remains in office until the presidential election, he may fail to be nominated to run for president. It is possible that it is exactly what his enemies among Hollande’s team are aiming for. There is, however, another option. In the absence of a popular and “accepted” leader, in order to protect Manuel Valls against the inevitable salvos of criticism, he will be replaced as head of the Cabinet and appointed party leader. This scenario is more probable the higher the stakes are in the 2017 presidential election campaign between France’s left-wing and right-wing. The National Front’s successes could become instrumental in this.

France today is undergoing a revival of the traditional French model, which typically involves a highly polarized society and strong confrontation between the left-wing and right-wing camps.

If class and social interests start to dominate in society again, it may help Social Democrats to win back the votes they have lost.

Will François Hollande retain his presidential office until 2017?

France has no impeachment procedure. It will have to take some fantastic scandal associated with high treason. There have been no such precedents so far, and I doubt that such a moderate and cautious politician as François Hollande could achieve something of the kind.

His ratings by 2017 are another matter. So far, he has been the least popular President of the Fifth Republic, and his ratings are lower than those of Sarkozy, who was at the helm at the time when the global financial crisis broke out.

It is too early to discuss the forthcoming presidential election as so many events could happen in the meantime that could completely reverse the picture. It is too early for any accurate forecasts on that now.

Interviewed by Maria Gurova, RIAC Programme Assistant.