Paris blog: the Sarko tsunami

The bitter rivalry between France’s leftwing power couple was today directly blamed by Socialists for the party’s disastrous showing in key elections.

France’s Left was forced to contemplate the prospect of parliamentary obscurity as voters fuelled the success of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

With the Socialists facing a possible record defeat in next Sunday’s final round, giving Mr Sarkozy a virtual free hand for his radical programme of reforms, Ségolene Royal and Francois Hollande responded by sparring in public.

The latest spat between Ms Royal, who lost the presidency to Mr Sarkozy last month, and Mr Hollande, her party leader and father of their four children, was too much for some Socialists who blamed them both for the party’s electoral misery.

“I have had enough of political life and especially that of my party hinging on the life of one couple,” Manuel Valls, one of the Socialists’ rising stars, complained.

The couple disagreed on how to handle François Bayrou, the third-placed candidate in the spring presidential race.

The Democratic Movement (MoDem), Mr Bayrou’s new centrist party, crashed in the first-round vote for France’s new parliament on Sunday, setting the scene for a landslide for Mr Sarkozy’s conservative Union for a Popular Movement. However the MoDem’s 7.6 per cent of the vote gives Mr Bayrou influence over the outcome in over a dozen seats.

Ms Royal, 53, said in a radio interview that she was telephoning Mr Bayrou to propose an alliance to maximise opposition to what she called the dangerous steamroller of the Sarkozy administration.

Mr Hollande, who wants to remain party leader for another 15 months, mocked the idea, saying that the Socialists should not seek favours from Mr Bayrou. “Everyone can phone whom they want. We’re in a democracy,” said Mr Hollande. “I don’t have to make any calls.”

The rivalry between Mr Hollande and the partner who wants his job, mirrors the disarray across the feuding Socialist party as it strives to convince voters who abstained on Sunday to come to its rescue in the run-off.

The Socialists are expected to reap a mere 60 to 185 seats in the 577-member Parliament, with between 380-500 for Mr Sarkozy’s UMP. The leftwing party that was forged in the 1960s by the late François Mitterrand now faces the possibility of its biggest defeat since he led it to power in 1981.

Among 111 MPs who won election outright on Sunday, 110 are from the UMP and only one is a Socialist. Only one Minister faces possible defeat in the run-off. Alain Juppé, the head of an Environment super-ministry and number two to François Fillon, the Prime Minister, is being given a close run by a Socialist challenger in Bordeaux, where he is Mayor.

Sunday’s first round, which was marked by a record low turnout of 60 percent, also saw the rout of two parties which have for decades been a force in French politics - the Communists and the National Front.

The Communists, who governed with Mitterrand and were once France’s biggest party, are expected to lose two thirds of their 21 seats. The National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen saw its vote evaporate to 4 per cent after Mr Sarkozy wooed away its supporters with his hard line on immigration and crime.

Le Monde wrote the Front’s epitaph. “For a quarter of a century the National Front has played a baleful role in our politics, trying to popularise its xenophobic and racist message.... This long, excessively long, interim is now drawing to a close,” it said.

Leftwing commentators and the opposition united in decrying what they depicted as the undemocratic “absolute” power that Mr Sarkozy is poised to acquire with the expected “blue tidal wave” in Parliament.

Mr Bayrou, who may end up being the only parliamentary member for his new party, lamented “the terribly one-sided parliament” that was about to emerge. “One day, France will regret this lack of balance. It is not healthy,” he said.

Political scientists and other observers saw Mr Sarkozy’s supremacy as the natural consequence of an electoral system designed to amplify the choice of voters.

The most unusual feature of Sunday’s vote was that it seals the return of an outgoing parliamentary majority for the first time in three decades. Despite the relatively low turnout, the pro-Sarkozy tide is seen as a mandate for the deep economic and social reforms that the popular new President has promised.

Le Monde, which is generally critical of Mr Sarkozy, said that the parliamentary vote showed “a deep longing among the French for reform.” Le Figaro, a pro-Sarkozy newspaper, said: “A new France is taking shape... The French have shown that they want change and they want it fast.”

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