HIS HERO HAD TO BE A LITTLE MAN, EH?:

Reflections in tranquility (Charles Bremner, 4/12/06, Times Online)

The Prime Minister's collapse was hardly a hard fought Waterloo, to borrow an image from his beloved Bonaparte. On the orders of his commander-in-chief, Jacques Chirac, he simply capitulated to the students, trade unions and leftwing parties who had spent two months rebelling against his youth employment law. The parliament which approved the reform in March must now replace it with yet another scheme for subsidising jobs with tax money. Now over with a whimper, the war of the First Employment Contract (CPE) was an epic example of how not to govern and an illustration of France's unhappy state.

There are few winners. De Villepin's high-handed attempt to impose reform without debate has given a new lease of life to France's archaic and disunited trade unions and it has offered hope to the Socialist party with presidential and parliamentary elections a year away. By paralysing the universities and high schools, the students feel that they have woken the country to their anguish over the state's inability to guarantee jobs for everyone. Also on the winning side is Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and would-be president, who outmanoeuvered de Villepin and consigned his rival's political career to la poubelle.

These victories are hollow. The ever feuding Socialists are nowhere near agreeing on a presidential candidate or a manifesto for governing France. A poll this week showed that 62 percent of the country believes that the Socialists have no better ideas for reducing unemployment than de Villepin's crew.
The students are high on their triumph, but they have merely restored the status quo of high youth unemployment and made sure that no-one will attempt reforms again for a long time. Sarkozy, who has always cast himself as a courageous reformer, has weakened his image in the eyes of his rightwing base. Rather than standing firm with the government, he pulled the rug from under de Villepin and set the scene for the sell-out to the protesters.

It barely needs saying that De Villepin, a civil servant and apprentice politician, has shredded the little credibility that he had earned since Chirac appointed him in May last year.

MORE:
Sarkozy will prove to be a hard man for the Socialists to beat (Colin Randall, 14/04/2006, Daily Telegraph)

Guillaume, a Parisian biology student, was almost certainly overdoing the modesty when he told the conservative daily Le Figaro on Tuesday's "victory" march: "We won't have another chance in our lives to lead such a combat."

Only a spoilsport would wish to ruin the fun of all those young demonstrators now feeling so pleased with themselves after forcing Jacques Chirac and his government to abandon their attempt, tame as it appeared to most people outside France, to inject flexibility into the French labour market. And only a fool or a liar would deny that Ségolène Royal has emerged from this latest French farce smelling of roses.

France's socialist opposition, in deep disarray after its own part in the debacle of last year's failed referendum on the EU constitution, desperately needed someone special to put its 2007 election build-up back on course. Highly photogenic, self-assured and media-friendly, Miss Royal is that someone, despite the posturing and resentment of her party's greying, male old guard.

But it is possible to look beyond her powerful showing in the polls and ask whether this bright, ambitious mother-of-four is the sole or principal winner to emerge from the debris of an abandoned law.

According to the latest soundings, Miss Royal is sufficiently ahead of the centre-Right's blue-eyed boy, Nicolas Sarkozy, to be capable of beating him in a conclusive second ballot for the Elysée 13 months from now.

It must be remembered, however, that her latest advances follow a cleverly orchestrated public relations blitz that put her on the covers of the mass circulation magazines and gave her star billing on France's equivalent of the News at Ten.

All she needed to do, in those interviews, was to avoid shooting herself in the foot. Despite her previous support for "some of what Tony Blair has done", which angered the Left but oddly enough did her no lasting harm, she appears too smart for that.

But even assuming that she rises above the bickering party "elephants" to secure the socialist nomination for the presidency in November, the questions are self-evident. Will her popularity last the pace? Is another socialist president what France actually needs right now?