France Faces Revival Of Radical Left

**Ryan Ruck** · April 20th, 2012, 07:05

Not good.

Dovetails with the "Is NATO as we know it dissolving?" thread.

France Faces Revival Of Radical Left

April 15, 2012

A powerful revival of France’s radical left, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former socialist minister, and with a resurgent Communist party at its core, looks poised to be one of the most striking outcomes of next Sunday’s first round of voting in the country’s presidential election.

Mr Mélenchon, who has emerged from relative obscurity to become the most dynamic figure in the campaign, reinforced his dramatic rise at the weekend, drawing tens of thousands of red flag waving supporters from across the country to a rally at the Prado beach in the Mediterranean port of Marseilles on Saturday.

“We are writing a page in the history of the left. We are the renaissance of the left,” he declared to roars from the crowd, chanting “Resistance! Resistance!”

The question is what effect a strong showing by Mr Mélenchon could have, particularly on François Hollande, the mainstream Socialist party candidate who is favourite to win the Elysée in the decisive second round of the election on May 6.

At the heart of Mr Mélenchon’s campaign, which brings together his own Left party, the Communist party of France and other far left groups under the banner of the Left Front, is an outright rejection of the austerity policies pursued across the European Union, including France, in response to the sovereign debt crisis.

It is a message that has resonated widely: Mr Mélenchon’s outdoor rallies have easily rivalled those of Nicolas Sarkozy, the president, and Mr Hollande in numbers and intensity; his poll ratings have soared from 5 per cent two months ago to as high as 17 per cent in recent surveys, suggesting that he could even come in third behind Mr Sarkozy and Mr Hollande, who have pledged to stick to tough targets to reduce France’s budget deficit and high public debt.

“The main reason is because [Mélenchon] is the only one not submitting to the policy of austerity. He’s saying no to cuts in public spending,” said Julie Castanier, a Young Communist party activist, as she stood in the Prado crowd. “He is the only one who is saying this and we have been waiting for it for a long time.”

Mr Mélenchon has dubbed the Socialist candidate ‘Hollandreou’ – likening Mr Hollande to George Papandreou, the former socialist Greek prime minister forced to resign last year as he came under pressure from his eurozone partners to enforce stringent budget measures.

His policies, including rescinding the new EU fiscal discipline treaty, raising the minimum wage from €1,200 to €1,700 a month and confiscating all income above €360,000 a year, go far beyond even Mr Hollande’s proposal to tax income above €1m at 75 per cent.

Mr Mélenchon quit the Socialist party in 2008 but the charismatic former Trotskyite has succeeded in mobilising support across the radical left, tapping into a long tradition of revolutionary politics that remains strong in France. It includes a strong revival in the fortunes of the Communist party, out of power since the 1980s, and whose candidate in 2007 won under 2 per cent of the vote.

“If Mélenchon gets 12-13 per cent of the vote it will be extraordinary,” said Jean Chiche of Sciences Po university. “It will change the balance of forces on the left. It will give force back to the communists, who have been moribund for years.”

The Mélenchon surge is undoubtedly awkward for Mr Hollande, who will need Left Front supporters to vote for him in the second round to secure victory – without scaring off centrist voters. Mr Sarkozy has said Mr Hollande has become a hostage to Mr Mélenchon and the communists.

Mr Hollande has said he will not negotiate on policy with the Left Front. But he has left the door open to having figures from the group in his government.

However, Mr Mélenchon, and the Communist party, have said they intend to build a strong parliamentary group in the national assembly elections in June, to allow them to continue to push their hardline policy positions, rather than participate in a government committed to the budgetary strictures accepted by Mr Hollande.

That would potentially make life difficult for a Hollande government balancing the demands of the financial markets and its eurozone partners with pressure from a revitalised left at home.

As Mr Mélenchon said, mocking Mr Hollande’s own reassurance, in English, to the City of London that he was “not dangerous”: “We are very dangerous!”

**Ryan Ruck** · April 23rd, 2012, 06:08

François Hollande Builds Lead As Nicolas Sarkozy Allies Admit Writing Is On The Wall

Poll saying socialist could win by 14 per cent leaves right wing in despair

April 19, 2012

Confronted with plunging polls and deserting allies, President Nicolas Sarkozy faces the prospect of a rout in the two-round French presidential election starting this weekend, with senior members of his government already said to be certain of defeat.

Supporters of the front-running Socialist candidate, François Hollande, could scarcely contain their euphoria when they gathered in Lille for their last big rally on Tuesday night before French electors go to the polls on Sunday. They interrupted the candidate's speech endlessly with chants of "François president, François president".

"You are well informed," Mr Hollande quipped. "It is possible we are going to win. It's not certain... but, yes, I feel the hope rising."

New polls published yesterday suggested that Mr Hollande, 57, was leading the field of 10 candidates in the first round with up to 29 per cent of the vote. He had extended his lead over Mr Sarkozy to between two and four points. In voting intentions for the two-candidate, second round on 6 May, Mr Hollande now leads the President by a "landslide" margin of 14 to 16 per cent.

In a series of damning, private remarks, reported by the Le Canard Enchainé newspaper, senior members of President Sarkozy's government said that defeat now seemed inevitable.

"The carrots are cooked," the Prime Minister, François Fillon, was quoted as saying. "[Sarkozy's] strategy of campaigning on hard-right issues was a serious mistake." The former centre-right prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, was reported to have said privately: "There is no chance of us winning."

The President has also suffered a series of desertions. It was reported earlier this week that the former President Jacques Chirac intended to switch sides and vote for Mr Hollande. A clutch of former Sarkozy ministers and supporters, from the right, left and centre of French politics, have also declared they will vote for the socialist. They include Martin Hirsch and Fadéla Amara, two of Mr Sarkozy's ministerial recruits from the Left after his 2007 election and three former centre-right Chirac-era ministers, Azouz Begag, Corinne Lepage and Brigitte Girardin.

The President has fought an energetic but erratic campaign. He began by warning that France needed tough medicine to escape recession. But he then switched to a hard-right message to reclaim votes from Marine Le Pen's National Front.

In recent weeks, Mr Sarkozy warned that French "identity" was menaced by a tide of illegal immigration, Islamist terrorism and halal meat. Last Sunday, he stole abruptly – and without acknowledgement – Mr Hollande's argument that the European Central Bank should be allowed to pump reflationary cash into Eurozone economies (a policy that Mr Sarkozy had opposed with Germany).

Mr Sarkozy's sharp right turn propelled him into a narrow lead in first- round opinion polls but that support now appears to have dribbled back to Ms Le Pen. In polls published yesterday, she regained third place with around 17 per cent of the vote.

The hard-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose lurid anti-capitalist rhetoric has illuminated an uninspiring campaign, fell back to fourth place with around 13-14 per cent.

Through all these twists and turns, Mr Hollande has held his nerve. At the Lille rally, he said he would bring a three-part approach to the economic crisis: "responsibility" (deficit cuts, mostly through tax rises); "growth" (EU capital investment programmes and the reflationary printing of euros); and "solidarity" (help for poorer people and poorer EU countries).

Still, the limitations of "Hollandism" were apparent. He failed to fill a giant pop-concert venue from which most seats had been cleared. The crowd of 15,000 cheered his rhetoric against "big finance" but became fidgety as Mr Hollande explained the minutiae of his plans.

The Socialist top brass, seated nearby, were, however, two steps ahead of Mr Hollande. Their chatter was not about the first or second rounds but the "third round": who would be "in" and who would be "out" in the first centre-left government for a decade. The favourite to be Mr Hollande's prime minister is the Socialist party leader, Martine Aubry, daughter of former European Commission President Jacques Delors.

Mr Hollande and Ms Aubry briefly held up one another's arms in a victory salute at the Lille rally. However, their stiff body language suggested the prime-ministerial choice has yet to be made.

Presidential election: How the voting works

The opening round of the presidential election this weekend is the first of four polling days in just over two months. On Sunday, French voters will choose between the 10 candidates. The top two go on to the second round on 6 May, after which the winner will hold office for five years, not seven as used to be the case.

He (never yet she) will be the ultimate arbiter of French policy but will not run the government day to day. To do that, the President will choose a Prime Minister. He, or possibly she, will seek to win a parliamentary majority in the lower house of parliament.

These "legislative elections" will be fought, once again over two rounds, on 10 and 17 June.

**vector7** · May 6th, 2012, 23:52

What Sarkozy Loss Really Means for America

by Joel B. Pollak 6 hours ago 77 post a comment

The mainstream media will attempt to spin French President Nicholas Sarkozy's loss today to Socialist challenger François Hollande as a rejection of "austerity" policies--and to urge American voters to reject the deficit-cutting politics of the Tea Party when we go to the polls in November. In fact, there are important lessons from France--and they are the precise opposite of what the media is telling us.

First, to call Sarkozy's policies "austerity" is to insult both austerity and socialism. The French government--like other European governments--sought to close its budget gap primarily by raising taxes, not by cutting the size and cost of government. Neither Sarkozy nor Hollande had the courage to confront the basic, failed structure of France's welfare-state economy, which is the fundamental cause of its budget problems.

Insofar as French politicians have relied on tax increases as the key to deficit reduction, that is far closer to the policy of U.S. President Barack Obama and his Democrats than to the approach of the Tea Party and the Republicans. Even so, American media commentators like Joan Walsh and Paul Krugman are blaming Congress and "austerity" for slow economic growth--though federal spending keeps growing.

Another media angle will, no doubt, be to draw analogies between Marine Le Pen's National Front and the Tea Party. It is true that Sarkozy has suffered from a split conservative vote, and that the effect of a Tea Party (or Libertarian) split in the U.S. would be to hand a victory to Obama and the Democrats. But the similarities end there.

The National Front has a long tradition of racism and antisemitism, and both of those have become staples of French politics. In 2002, it was the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, who suffered from the strong showing of the National Front in the country's first post-9/11 election (a far stronger nativist reaction than anything seen in the U.S.).

Though conservative Americans want stronger enforcement against illegal immigration, that sentiment does not typically come packaged in xenophobia, as it often does in Europe. Both for cultural and economic reasons, the U.S. today is simply better at integrating immigrants into the mainstream of American life, and legal immigration enjoys strong support from both parties.

The French electorate has been disappointed in both of the main candidates--so much so that some voters chose "Biquette, the goat" as an alternative. Sarkozy lost because, like nearly a dozen other European leaders, he lacked the courage to make the harsh but necessary reforms to set France right. The lesson for both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. is that political cowardice is no longer an option.

**Malsua** · May 7th, 2012, 12:29

I don't think this socialist in France will make any difference whatsoever.

**vector7** · May 7th, 2012, 16:49

In other news Putin is sworn in office...

Obama invites France's Hollande to Washington in May

PARIS | Mon May 7, 2012 11:09am EDT

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has invited French president-elect Francois Hollande for bilateral talks in Washington this month before members of the NATO defense alliance meet for a summit, a close Hollande aide said on Monday.

Pierre Moscovici, Hollande's campaign director, said Obama had called Hollande on Sunday to congratulate him on his election victory and to invite France's president-elect to a meeting of G8 heads of state at Camp David on May 18-19.

That will be followed by a summit of leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) in Chicago on May 20-21.

"He also proposed a bilateral meeting before that summit, in Washington," Moscovici told journalists in Paris.

Hollande, who beat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in an election on Sunday with 51.7 percent of votes, is due to be sworn in as French president on May 15.

The trip to Washington will follow shortly after Hollande's inauguration and his first trip abroad, to Berlin, where he will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

**Malsua** · May 7th, 2012, 17:04

Obama and this Hollandaise are probably going to sit in the white house and have a circle jerk about all the taxes they're going to impose.

**vector7** · May 7th, 2012, 17:37

Companion Threads:

Cloward-Piven Strategy Working Perfectly — in Europe

The now-infamous “Cloward-Piven Strategy” outlined by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven in 1966 proposed a clear roadmap to socialism: get so many people addicted to government entitlements that the economic system collapses, and in the resulting chaos the populace will demand and vote for a new economic system in which everyone is supported by the state.

Sounds logical (if nefarious), and President Obama seems hell-bent on bringing it to fruition in the United States. The problem for Obama’s inner socialist is that he’s also required for appearance’s sake to attempt a rescue of the American economy using Keynesian principles. This self-cancelling combo-strategy is the underlying cause of our economic stagnation, as outlined in “The Obama-Piven Strategy,” an earlier PJM post I made last year that made some waves. What I noted back then remains true:

I propose that President Obama is simultaneously trying to rescue the economy using the Keynesian/Democratic model while at the same time also trying to destroy the economy through the Cloward-Piven Strategy. His two mutually contradictory plans cancel each other out, rendering all his efforts self-negating, and this explains why the American economy has stalled.

I dub this the Obama-Piven Strategy. And it’s the reason why we remain mired in a deep recession. We are neither recovering, as the Keynesian model predicts, nor is capitalism collapsing, as the revolutionaries hope; the Obama-Piven strategy ensures that we remain in suspended animation between the two extremes.

But something interesting happened on Sunday in Europe: Voters in both France and Greece, two countries ruinously addicted to government entitlements, rejected the “austerity” model of debt-reduction and instead doubled down on unsustainable spending sprees. France elected Socialist Francois Hollande as president, and in his acceptance speech he promised to increase government benefits and amp up “stimulus” spending programs — the exact things that got France into a metaphorical debtors’ prison in the first place. But exactly as Cloward and Piven had surmised, once you get 50+% of the population hooked on “free” government money, there’s no turning back — they will vote for socialists every time. The election of Hollande is the culmination of Cloward-Piven; the strategy worked, but in the wrong country.

(In a similar blunder, it should be noted, Karl Marx predicted that the first socialist revolution would happen in an industrialized country like Germany or Great Britain; instead the exact opposite happened, as two backward pre-industrial nations, Russia and China, were the first to embrace communism.)

Also on Sunday, Greece held local elections and voters rewarded various “anti-austerity” parties and candidates: “Greek voters punish ruling coalition, reward far left,” reads the headline. “Voters angry over austerity delivered a blow to Greece’s ruling parties on Sunday, with neither the conservative New Democracy nor the Pasok socialists winning enough votes to form a government while far-left Syriza took second place.” Even a “neo-Nazi” anti-immigrant party won seats for the first time because they too rejected the “austerity” measures and want to maintain the entitlement state (albeit solely for Greek citizens, in their case).

The message is clear: Once enough voters are on the dole, regardless of your party’s ideology or what label it has, you will win elections if you promise to to keep the free money flowing. This was Cloward-Piven’s point, and they turned out to be frighteningly correct.

What this means for Europe is anyone’s guess. Because both France and Greece are embedded in the EU, they do not have complete sovereignty over their own economies, so it still remains to be seen if the rest of the EU will allow them to spiral further into debt and reneg on previous agreements to tighten the pursestrings. But it seems that if they were left to their own devices, both France and Greece are willing to ignore reality and plunge headfirst into a completely unsustainable socialist model.

Sunday might not be as epochal as Russia’s October Revolution, but it should be remembered as the day of the first Cloward-Piven Revolution. It just happened in the “wrong” countries.

Will the revolution spread to America? Have Obama’s policies over the last four years addicted so many people to food stamps and Social Security disability payments and unemployment benefits and so many other entitlement programs that we as a nation will go the route of France and vote for the guy who promises to keep the drugs flowing, regardless of the consequences? Will the inherent resilience of the American economy keep the illusory prosperity afloat long enough to usher Obama into office for the final assault on capitalism?

Hayek help us.

**Ryan Ruck** · May 25th, 2012, 01:49

Good old Socialists always, "Don't do as I do, do as I say."

Socialist Hollande Owns Three Homes On The Riviera

May 11, 2012

France's new Socialist president owns three holiday homes in the Riviera resort of Cannes, it emerged today.

Francois Hollande, 57, who “dislikes the rich” and wants to revolutionise his country with high taxes and an onslaught against bankers, is in fact hugely wealthy himself.

His assets were published today in the Official Journal, the gazette which contains verified information about France’s government.

To the undoubted embarrassment of the most Left-wing leader in Europe, and a man who styles himself as “Mr Normal”, they are valued at almost £1 million.

It will also reinforce accusations that Hollande is a “gauche caviar”, or “Left-wing caviar” — the Gallic equivalent of a champagne Socialist.

Among his other assets are three current accounts in French banks — two with global giant Société Générale and one with the Postal Bank.

But it is the fabulous property portfolio which is causing the greatest stir among millions of ordinary French people who voted for Hollande over the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy last Sunday.

Mr Hollande regularly attacked the “bling-bling” presidency of Mr Sarkozy, whose multi-millionaire lifestyle with Italian-born heiress Carla Bruni contributed to his humiliating election defeat after just one term in office.

As well as the spacious Paris apartment he shares with his lover Valerie Trierweiler, Mr Hollande owns a palatial villa in Mougins, the hill-top Cannes suburb where artist Pablo Picasso used to live.

It is valued by the Official Journal at 800,000 euros (£642,000), and is just a short drive from Hollande’s two flats close to the promenade in Cannes. They are priced at 230,000 euros (£185,000) and 140,000 euros (£112,000). Mr Hollande has promised to cut his pay by 30 per cent after he is officially sworn in as president next week, but he will still be on 156,000 (£125,000) a year, plus fabulous expenses and other perks.

He intends to set a top tax rate of 75 per cent, and to increase France’s wealth tax — moves which have already seen rich people threatening to leave the country and move abroad including to London.

Meanwhile, Mr Hollande wants to pour public money into France’s public services, creating thousands of jobs.

He has also threatened to block the eurozone’s new financial treaty unless Germany agrees to renegotiate its stringent austerity measures.

Mr Hollande wants the treaty, seen as crucial to ensuring the survival of the single currency, to focus more on encouraging growth.

Benoit Hamon, spokesman for Hollande’s Socialist Party, said the “politics of austerity” were failing to improve Europe’s financial crisis.

He said Mr Hollande would win a “trial of strength” over the fiscal pact, aimed at imposing budgetary discipline on the 25 EU countries signed up to it.

**American Patriot** · May 25th, 2012, 16:27

Well, on the bright side, he of course won't tax HIMSELF....

**Ryan Ruck** · July 8th, 2012, 17:27

It Begins: France‘s Socialist Government Goes After the ‘Well-Off’

July 4, 2012

France’s Socialist government wants to raise €7.2 billion ($9 billion) in new revenue from higher taxes on estates, banks, and oil companies to try to reduce the deficit.

The measures are among those in a revised 2012 budget draft presented at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. It will go to parliament later this month, where it is expected to win approval.

France’s new leadership has criticized austerity measures imposed around Europe, saying they are making the region’s debt crisis worse. It has focused on higher taxes for the “well-off,” though some spending cuts are also expected.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, speaking at a Fourth of July event at the U.S. Embassy, warned that Europe’s debt crisis “has not been extinguished” and that it’s not a “problem of the Europeans alone.”

**American Patriot** · July 8th, 2012, 21:21

America is already going after "the well off"....

**American Patriot** · August 25th, 2014, 14:31

Well, we can change this thread title now to:

France's Left Destroys France....

Or something similar.

No more government there.

France's Hollande demands new government after leftist dissent

By John Irish and Alexandria Sage
PARIS Mon Aug 25, 2014 10:06am EDT

1 of 3. French President Francois Hollande delivers a speech in the rain on the Ile de Sein, an island located near the Pointe-du-Raz, off the Brittany coast, August 25, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Philippe Wojazer

(Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande asked his prime minister on Monday to form a new government, looking to impose his will on the cabinet after rebel leftist ministers had called for an economic policy U-turn.

The surprise move came the day after outspoken Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg had condemned what he called fiscal "austerity" and attacked euro zone powerhouse Germany's "obsession" with budgetary rigour.

In a terse statement, Hollande's office said Prime Minister Manuel Valls had handed in his government's resignation, opening the way for a reshuffle just four months after taking office.

"The head of state asked him to form a team that supports the objectives he has set out for the country," the statement said, suggesting Valls would continue trying to revive the euro zone's second largest economy with tax cuts for businesses while slowly reining in its public deficit by trimming spending.

France has lagged other euro zone economies in emerging from a recent slowdown, fuelling frustration over Hollande's leadership, both within his Socialist party and further afield.

The new cabinet will be announced on Tuesday and there was no immediate word on who would stay and who would go. Local media reported that left-wing Culture Minister Aurelie Filipetti had signalled she did not want a post in the new government.

If Hollande decided to sack Montebourg, who is viewed as a potential presidential rival, he would risk seeing the ousted minister take with him a band of rebel lawmakers and deprive him of the parliamentary majority he needs to push through reforms.

Opposition conservatives, who for weeks have been embroiled in their own leadership rows, called for an outright dissolution of parliament, as did the far-right National Front.

"With half of the presidential mandate already gone, it doesn't bode well for the ability of the president, or whatever government he chooses, to take key decisions," said former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, one of handful of hopefuls for the conservative ticket in the 2017 presidential election.

"The big question with this reshuffle is whether Francois Hollande will still have a parliamentary majority," Frederic Dabi of pollster Ifop told i>Tele.

In a confidence vote in April, Valls' government scored 306 votes - above the 289 votes needed for an absolute majority - with the help of smaller allied parties.

"ALTERNATIVE MOTOR"

A new survey released at the weekend showed Hollande's poll ratings stuck at 17 percent, the lowest for any leader of France since its Fifth Republic was formed in 1958. Valls, a once-popular interior minister, saw his own popularity eroded by his failure to tackle unemployment, which is stuck above 10 percent.

Despite being promoted within the cabinet to economy minister, Montebourg has emerged as the most visible leader of the left since Hollande in January adopted a more pro-business line to try and boost the economy with corporate tax breaks.

Hollande has also sought to repair ties with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives that have been strained by France's repeated failures to meet budgetary targets agreed with the Brussels-based European Commission.

Speaking at a meeting of Socialists in eastern France on Sunday, Montebourg said deficit-reduction measures carried out since the 2008 financial crisis had crippled euro zone economies and urged governments to change course swiftly or lose their voters to populist and extremist parties.

"The time has come for us to take on an alternative leadership, to set up an alternative motor," he told the gathering, where Education Minister Benoit Hamon also took Hollande's policies to task.

The irony of the timing of Montebourg's comments is that EU policymakers have in recent weeks acknowledged the bloc's rules on budget consolidation should be followed with flexibility, while France this month conceded that stagnant growth meant it would miss its 2014 budget target.

ECB chief Mario Draghi last week eased the focus of his euro zone policy away from austerity towards reviving growth, urging governments in a speech to do more to boost demand and hinting at European Central Bank action.

Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and others saw their bond yields hit all-time lows on Monday in response to his remarks, as speculation grew the ECB was preparing new asset purchases to counter wilting inflation.

Analysts said the showdown suggested the 51-year-old Montebourg -- who this year forced General Electric to sweeten its offer for French industrial icon Alstrom's turbine business -- was looking to disassociate himself from Hollande and rally the country's splintered left behind a rival presidential bid.

"Montebourg's exit resonates like real ambition for 2017, that's clear," Martial Foucault, director of the Cevipof think tank, said of Montebourg, who in a Socialist primary for the 2012 presidential ticket won 17 percent of ballots - a losing score which nonetheless gives him clout in the party.

Foucault forecast that the government to be named by Valls on Tuesday would be more centrist in tone but noted: "You need ministers who are capable of speaking with unions, employers and Germany and, I admit, there are not a lot of alternatives."

(Additional reporting by Maya Nikolaeva and Julien Ponthus; Writing by Mark John; Editing by Crispian Balmer)