Her political family thinks that he is beneath her, but Ségolène Royal, the
Socialist presidential candidate, tried yesterday to talk the centrist
François Bayrou into political marriage in a risky gamble to increase her
chances of becoming France’s first female leader.
Her televised “debate-dialogue” with Bayrou, who was eliminated in third place
in last weekend’s first-round vote, outraged some in her left-wing base but
was crucial for her prospects of beating the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy in
the runoff next Sunday. By most calculations, Royal needed to seduce at
least half of Bayrou’s 7m voters to emerge as Madame la Présidente.
To the indignation of Sarkozy, who felt upstaged by their antics, Royal, a
charismatic mother of four, and Bayrou, a part-time horse breeder from the
Pyrenees, met in a Paris hotel to see what they had in common. The chemistry
improved as the talking began and, by the end of it, the two former rivals
were joking with each other.
At one point, the moderator of the debate asked them: “Do you think you can
live together” - there was a pause before he continued - “in a social
democratic party?”
Bayrou, a former education minister who is married with six children, shot
back: “You had me worried there for a moment,” to which Royal, who is the
common-law wife of François Hollande, the Socialist party’s
secretary-general, responded: “He may be called François, but let’s not
exaggerate.”
In almost two hours seated at a table with Royal, Bayrou, an affable figure
with cauliflower ears whose campaign symbol was a tractor, stressed time and
again that he would not offer an endorsement and Royal said she was not
expecting one.
However, he encouraged her with suggestions of where his sympathies lay. He
implicitly praised Royal for agreeing to a debate unlike Sarkozy, who had
rejected him.
“There were people on the left and right who were not happy,” he said. “But
where’s the crime? I’m in favour of opening wide the windows.”
He also repeated a claim that Sarkozy, a former interior minister said to have
an immense sway over media proprietors, had tried to block the debate by
putting pressure on a national television channel not to host the encounter.
Sarkozy, renowned for his quick temper, strongly denied the charge and painted
himself as the victim yesterday of a “Stalinist” campaign against him by
Royal, who has repeatedly denounced his “brutality” and “instability”, and
by Bayrou, whom he accused of being a poor loser.
“They’re in a hotel room doing little deals together,” he sniffed at
journalists following him yesterday on the campaign trail.
The hotel debate was part of a decisive new stage in a hard-to-predict and
increasingly bitter election that has excited the public by offering a
promise of real change in a country in need of renewal.
Royal, 53, and Sarkozy, 52, are much younger than previous incumbents and
either would be expected to bring a shift in presidential style and
substance.
Bayrou, 55, suggested that his tally of votes gave him as much right as
Sarkozy and Royal to participate in the transformation of France, even if he
was no longer on the ballot.
Normally only the candidates facing each other in the final round of the
election hold a debate - Sarkozy and Royal will clash this week - and for
Bayrou, yesterday’s unprecedented political tango with Royal marked the
start of the political modernisation that he had advocated throughout his
“third way” campaign.
“Whoever is elected on Sunday will need to make all the country’s political
forces work together,” he said.
His good-humoured discussion with a relaxed-looking Royal covered everything
from economic affairs to Europe, the strong euro, law and order and whether
his mother’s pension of £430 a month should be raised. “Of course,” said
Royal, flashing her famous smile at him.
One of the most marked disagreements was on the economy, with Bayrou claiming
that the Socialist programme permitted too big a role for the state.
The 35-hour working week was also a bone of contention. Bayrou said he opposed
it but Royal referred to the controversial law as “considerable human
progress” that had allowed countless parents to spend more time at home with
their children.
They agreed about the need for Europe to defend “human values” but Bayrou said
it was wrong to want to influence the European Central Bank, as Royal and
Sarkozy have advocated. Germany’s exports, he said, had not been hurt by a
strong euro. Royal countered that the cost of producing the Air-bus had
risen 30% because of it.
As for Royal’s advocacy of the need for all French citizens to know the words
of the national anthem by heart and to keep a tri-colour flag in their home,
Bayrou agreed that everyone should know La Marseillaise, whose lyrics have,
in any case, been taught in French schools for years.
He laughed about the flag, however, saying: “It’s a bit like wanting to have a
law saying that everyone should have a picture of their mum in their living
room.” He went on: “France is not about external signs, it is about values.”
Royal denied that she had called for compulsory flag ownership, adding that
she had simply wanted to win back the flag as a symbol from the far right,
which had monopolised it for so long.
She appealed to Bayrou supporters by adopting the language of their champion.
She wanted to end the fruitless, political confrontation of “bloc against
bloc”, she said, and to modernise French institutions, which meant creating
a stronger, more accountable parliament as well as an independent judiciary.
On that, there was no disagreement.
Royal knew that her best chance of winning on May 6 was to rally as many of
Bayrou’s former supporters as possible. According to one poll yesterday,
only 35% of them were planning to give her their support and 29% were for
Sarkozy.
The risk she took yesterday, however, was of alienating Socialist voters. Many
of the party’s ideologues glimpsed in her courtship of Bayrou an unwelcome
attempt to modernise a socialist movement whose left is still under the sway
of the hammer and sickle.
This, they feared, would be achieved by the creation of a social democrat
centre, an outcome Romano Prodi, the Italian prime minister, called for in a
video message addressed to Royal’s supporters at a rally in Lyon on Friday.
In response, Henri Emmanuelli , one of the party’s senior figures, talked
yesterday of creating a new party of “progressives” to counter Royal’s shift
to the centre. Even Hollande, the father of Royal’s children, poured cold
water on the flirtation with Bayrou. “There will be no negotiation,” he said
bluntly.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, a Socialist senator, was furious at the dalliance,
expressing the widely held view that the cunning “horse whisperer” was
intent on the destruction of the Socialist party in the interests of
building his own New Democrat party, which he wants to present candidates in
every constituency in June’s parliamentary elections.
“Careful comrades, you’re playing with fire,” he said. “These hazardous
gymnastics will soon have a price. Do we believe we can mobilise the
left-wing voters of the first round in this way?”
Clémentine Autain, the communist deputy mayor of Paris, was just as dismissive
of the Royal gambit: “Her love story with François Bayrou won’t sort
anything out.”
Only one aspect of the talks seemed to satisfy the Socialist rank and file.
They fostered the impression that Bayrou was part of an “antiSarkozy front”.
On Wednesday Bayrou had savaged Sarkozy, saying: “With his close links to the
business world and media powers, his taste for intimidation and threats,
Nicolas Sarkozy will concentrate powers as never before.” He went on: “He
risks aggravating our social divide through policies that benefit the
richest.” He returned to this theme on Thursday when decrying the decision
of Canal Plus not to broadcast yesterday’s debate which, in the end, went
out on a small, independent channel.
Sarkozy, for his part, was furious to find himself left out of the limelight,
having won Sunday’s first round of voting. “When you have a football
competition,” he said, “there is a final. It is between the No 1 and the No
2. You have to respect the choice of the voters. It is these two who must
debate.”
Yet he too had been trying furiously to court Bayrou’s supporters and went
from sounding annoyed at being left out to appearing genuinely hurt by the
allegations being made against him.
“I ask myself what admirable things have they done in their lives to permit
them to speak about me with such contempt, such violence, such intolerance,”
he said at a campaign rally in Cournon d’Auvergne, in central France, on
Friday.
Earlier in the week Eric Bes-son, a former Socialist economist and defector
from the Royal camp, had turned up at a Sarkozy rally and said the Royal
campaign was “deliberately conceived to demonise Sarkozy”.
“Why so much hate?” Sarkozy asked repeatedly at the rally. “Maybe it is
because I say out loud what everyone thinks to themselves.”
It did not have much effect. Instead, Royal, who has herself been the target
of fierce criticism - much of it from her own Socialist family - and
questions about her competence to govern the country, mocked her opponent
for playing the victim.
“You know all the blows that I have received during this campaign,” she told a
big crowd in an exhibition centre in Lyon on Friday night. “But I don’t pose
before the television every blessed morning like a victim,” she added
scornfully. “Poor victim!”
More important than the attacks on Sarkozy, however, was the rush to conquer
“Bayrou land”, considered the key to victory on Sunday.
In the early stages of the campaign, Bayrou had loudly complained of a media
plot to deny him publicity. All that has changed. On Wednesday hundreds of
journalists from around the world awaited his arrival at a press conference
in which he announced the formation of his new party.
Its initials - PD - were unfortunate, the pronunciation being the same as the
word for homosexual, but this could scarcely dim the delight of Bayrou at
being the centre of global attention.
“At 8pm on Sunday evening,” he began, referring to the time the results were
announced, “I, who at 7.59pm had been someone they didn’t want to associate
with, became suddenly seductive and extremely agreeable in the eyes of both
of the candidates.” He had often been accused of being big-headed. It will
not get any better.
The two candidates were courting him, in the words of one commentator, “as
ardently as sailors just into port”: they recorded messages on his mobile
telephone - Sarkozy left 18 - and wrote him letters to which he did not
reply.
On Tuesday night in Rouen, a Sarkozy campaign organiser selecting youths to
appear on stage with the candidate was seen pouncing on anyone wearing
orange, the Bayrou campaign colour. At the same event, MPs from Bayrou’s
party were deployed to announce that they were backing Sarkozy. What is
more, Sarkozy suddenly developed an interest in institutional reform, one of
the main campaign themes of the defeated Bayrou.
Royal went to work rounding up Bayrou supporters. She held a meeting with
Jacques Delors, the former European Commission president, if only because
Bayrou had once let slip that his ideal prime minister would have been “a
younger version of Delors”.
Yesterday’s opening handshake at the debate had seemed a bit frosty but Bayrou
and Royal warmed up as the dialogue developed. So will it bear fruit?
Bayrou said afterwards he still did not know how he was going to vote, adding
that it would depend on events over the next few days, including the
Royal-Sarkozy debate on Wednesday.
Even if he were to tell his supporters which way he was inclined, it might not
make any difference, according to one poll, which showed that most of them
would not let it affect their judgment.
Whatever the case, barring big mistakes by either candidate in their TV
debate, a close final is predicted, along with bitter recriminations about
the election being hijacked by Bayrou, the man who lost but behaved as
though he had won.
