French socialists were choking on their
coffee and croissants this morning as they took in the small print of
Nicolas Sarkozy's speech at the Porte de Versailles shindig launching
him as the centre-Right presidential candidate.
If the trouble with French streets is that too many of them are named after Jean Jaurès, as a character remarked in the 1970s Gérard Depardieu film Maitresse, the trouble with Jaurès is that his admirers now apparently include Sarko. François Hollande, general secretary of the Parti Socialiste and the father of Ségolène Royal's children, thinks the old lefty must be rattling round in the grave to which an assassin consigned him on the eve of France's entry into the First World War. Hollande did not need to complete his own indignant riposte: "Pauvres Jaurès! If only he had known that one day his name would be cited at a conference of the French Right......." I dread to think what some of those Right-wing tubthumpers who champion Sarko so enthusiatically would make of his soft spot for Jaurès. This, after all, was the man who helped create the party of Hollande and Ségo, founded what became France's Communist paper L'Humanité and opposed the Great War (it was his pacifistic objections to the conflict that got him killed). But let us not forget Margaret Thatcher on the steps of 10 Downing Street, marking her arrival as Prime Minister by adopting the words of St Francis of Assisi.
If the trouble with French streets is that too many of them are named after Jean Jaurès, as a character remarked in the 1970s Gérard Depardieu film Maitresse, the trouble with Jaurès is that his admirers now apparently include Sarko. François Hollande, general secretary of the Parti Socialiste and the father of Ségolène Royal's children, thinks the old lefty must be rattling round in the grave to which an assassin consigned him on the eve of France's entry into the First World War. Hollande did not need to complete his own indignant riposte: "Pauvres Jaurès! If only he had known that one day his name would be cited at a conference of the French Right......." I dread to think what some of those Right-wing tubthumpers who champion Sarko so enthusiatically would make of his soft spot for Jaurès. This, after all, was the man who helped create the party of Hollande and Ségo, founded what became France's Communist paper L'Humanité and opposed the Great War (it was his pacifistic objections to the conflict that got him killed). But let us not forget Margaret Thatcher on the steps of 10 Downing Street, marking her arrival as Prime Minister by adopting the words of St Francis of Assisi.
"Where there is discord, may we bring harmony," she declared. "Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope."Others were to assess quite harshly how much harmony, truth, faith and hope Maggie and her ministers brought, for example, to east Durham and South Wales. Hollande may regard Sarko as having misappropriated the heritage of a French socialist hero. The Left-of-centre Libération took a slightly kinder view. "Can a man who invokes Jaurès, Hugo, Mandel and Zola be wholly bad?" the paper asked. "Can a man who wants an irreproachable democracy be accused of rampant Le Pen-ism? Is a man who talks at length about the rights of the badly housed and the welfare of others be described as ultra-liberal?" While conceding that there was much of the "well-known Sarkozy cynicism" in all this, the Libé editorialist was gracious enough to conclude that for all that could be said to Sarko's detriment, he had produced an impressive performance. Over to you Ségo.
Labels: election, France, François Hollande, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Jaurès, L'Humanité, Libération, Margaret Thatcher, Nicolas Sarkozy, Parti Socialiste, president, Ségolène Royal, UMP
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