New Sheriff in Town

I love being in France at election time.  The French have a wide range of parties, from communist to fascist, so the campaigns are always interesting.  And the stakes are high, given that the government constitutes over half of the French economy.

Sunday was the final round of the municipal elections and it was a rout.  In France, all mayors are elected at the same time, once every six years.  Mayors are powerful and the elections are often decided on the basis of party.  So they act as a kind of referendum on the party in power, in this case the Socialists.

The results were historic, a crushing defeat for the Socialists and the biggest repudiation of the ruling party in 50 years.  Hundreds of towns, including Socialist strongholds, threw out their mayors and elected new ones from the right-wing party, the UMP.

This put French president Francois Hollande in a bind.  He had to do something, and fast, which is not how he likes to operate.  Hollande hates to make decisions, which is how he earned his nickname Mr. Flanby (Flanby is a popular brand of pudding.)  Which is partly why the French economy is such a mess – Hollande has spent his first two years in office mostly doing nothing and hoping things would pick up on their own.

But he had to act, so yesterday Hollande did what all good bosses do - he fired his subordinate the prime minister and blamed it all on him.  Well, he didn’t explicitly blame him but the guy’s not around anymore, is he?  Hollande replaced him with Manuel Valls, leader of the tiny right wing of the Socialist party and a real hard ass.  Nobody in the Socialist party much likes him but he’s the most popular politician in France and may actually get something done.

He’s also the winner of this year’s poll among French women, “Which politician would you most like to have a summer fling with?”  Seriously, they ask this question every year.  Last year’s winner was Minister of Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg, a real lefty who fancies himself something of a dandy and whose hobbies seem to be wearing scarves and threatening to nationalize companies.

There’s a big economic program that will be introduced into the legislature next month, proposing to do the unthinkable – cut taxes and (gasp) cut government spending.  It will be the first real test of Valls’ ability to get things done.  So the next few months will be exciting and we are looking forward to a springtime full of street demonstrations and strikes!

KVS