The best thing that Ségolène Royal can
say about this week is that she chose a good week to have a bad week.
Good, in the sense that the days following the installation of Nicolas
Sarkozy as her chief rival were always going to belong to him, barring
some public relations debacle.
Bad, in the sense that exactly such a PR nightmare has beset the Parti
Socialiste camp.
Mme Royal did manage to turn to her eventual advantage one tax issue - her own eligibility for France's notorious wealth tax, with a tendency to hit people who are not wealthy at all that Richard of Orléans has used this blog to explain well. She gave figures, spoke of transparency and made it look as if disreputable people from Sarko's centre-Right UMP party had been engaged in dirty tricks about her private affairs in an attempt to smear her. Actually, she used that word racaille that got Sarko into trouble at the start of the 2005 French riots. The BBC went for the harshest definitions - thugs, scum, filth - which rather overlooked the fact that the word can also mean rabble and is commonly used as such by parents to children and children to other children. All that matters, of course, is how the target of the term takes it and I am not sure if that is yet recorded. All in all, Ségo might have emerged smiling from a potentially damaging episode had it not been for three others. First she had been called upon to slap down her partner, François Hollande, general secretary of the party and routinely portrayed by cartoonists as the henpecked man indoors, when he came out with some contentious thoughts on income tax. Conservatives seized on the dispute with glee, claiming that the socialist mask had been allowed to slip. Then Le Monde printed unwelcome details of a party summit behind closed doors at which a defensive Ségo had to justify her low-key, let's appeal to the grass roots sort of campaigning style. A member had deliberately telephoned a reporter and left the call connected throughout the exchanges. Worst of all, Ségo has now taken the extraordinary step, for a candidate entering a presidential campaign that appears neck-and-neck, of suspending her spokesman Arnaud Montebourg, a familar face at a time when she needs as many as possible batting for her. His crime? To say on television: "Ségolène Royal has only one flaw. It's her partner." M Montebourg says it was a joke. His famously bossy boss said he had been given a well-deserved yellow card, sin-binned for a month. Either way - sense of humour breakdown or poor choice of close aide - the outcome reflects badly on her. At least, as I began by suggesting, she has packed all these troubles into the same uncomfortable spell. But she needs a good, swift recovery. How she performs during the rest of these early stages of the campaign may yet prove significant for the many voters whose minds are there to be changed.
Mme Royal did manage to turn to her eventual advantage one tax issue - her own eligibility for France's notorious wealth tax, with a tendency to hit people who are not wealthy at all that Richard of Orléans has used this blog to explain well. She gave figures, spoke of transparency and made it look as if disreputable people from Sarko's centre-Right UMP party had been engaged in dirty tricks about her private affairs in an attempt to smear her. Actually, she used that word racaille that got Sarko into trouble at the start of the 2005 French riots. The BBC went for the harshest definitions - thugs, scum, filth - which rather overlooked the fact that the word can also mean rabble and is commonly used as such by parents to children and children to other children. All that matters, of course, is how the target of the term takes it and I am not sure if that is yet recorded. All in all, Ségo might have emerged smiling from a potentially damaging episode had it not been for three others. First she had been called upon to slap down her partner, François Hollande, general secretary of the party and routinely portrayed by cartoonists as the henpecked man indoors, when he came out with some contentious thoughts on income tax. Conservatives seized on the dispute with glee, claiming that the socialist mask had been allowed to slip. Then Le Monde printed unwelcome details of a party summit behind closed doors at which a defensive Ségo had to justify her low-key, let's appeal to the grass roots sort of campaigning style. A member had deliberately telephoned a reporter and left the call connected throughout the exchanges. Worst of all, Ségo has now taken the extraordinary step, for a candidate entering a presidential campaign that appears neck-and-neck, of suspending her spokesman Arnaud Montebourg, a familar face at a time when she needs as many as possible batting for her. His crime? To say on television: "Ségolène Royal has only one flaw. It's her partner." M Montebourg says it was a joke. His famously bossy boss said he had been given a well-deserved yellow card, sin-binned for a month. Either way - sense of humour breakdown or poor choice of close aide - the outcome reflects badly on her. At least, as I began by suggesting, she has packed all these troubles into the same uncomfortable spell. But she needs a good, swift recovery. How she performs during the rest of these early stages of the campaign may yet prove significant for the many voters whose minds are there to be changed.
Labels: Arnaud Montebourg, BBC, election, France, françois Hollande, gaffes, Le Monde, Nicolas Sarkozy, Parti Socialiste, racaille, riots, Segolene Royal, UMP
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