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| François Hollande: Mr Normal takes a battering | François Hollande: Mr Normal takes a battering |
| (6 months later) | |
| François Hollande is battling insuperable headwinds. There is no mystery why his popularity has hit record lows, 10 months after a crushing victory that gave the socialists a clean sweep of the presidency, senate, national assembly, nearly all regions and major cities, and sent the opposition into a fratricidal leadership battle. With factories closing, unemployment may soon reach 3.2 million, a 14-year high. His promise to stabilise and reverse it by the end of the year is looking like yet another broken election pledge. There are already quite a few of them. | François Hollande is battling insuperable headwinds. There is no mystery why his popularity has hit record lows, 10 months after a crushing victory that gave the socialists a clean sweep of the presidency, senate, national assembly, nearly all regions and major cities, and sent the opposition into a fratricidal leadership battle. With factories closing, unemployment may soon reach 3.2 million, a 14-year high. His promise to stabilise and reverse it by the end of the year is looking like yet another broken election pledge. There are already quite a few of them. |
| At least the OECD report on Wednesdayy did not twist the knife in the president's back. It said France should not be forced to make further cuts, because the slowdown has made it impossible for it to meet its deficit reduction targets. What was always looking ambitious as a target has slipped out of reach and France's finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, has asked Brussels for another year to meet the budget deficit target. | At least the OECD report on Wednesdayy did not twist the knife in the president's back. It said France should not be forced to make further cuts, because the slowdown has made it impossible for it to meet its deficit reduction targets. What was always looking ambitious as a target has slipped out of reach and France's finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, has asked Brussels for another year to meet the budget deficit target. |
| Nor did the report provide much political comfort. It acknowledged the efforts his government had made to reduce labour costs, but left little doubt that more needed to be done. While France's economic position is not as dire as that of Europe's southern periphery, and it can still borrow cheaply, Hollande's political capital appears to be draining. | Nor did the report provide much political comfort. It acknowledged the efforts his government had made to reduce labour costs, but left little doubt that more needed to be done. While France's economic position is not as dire as that of Europe's southern periphery, and it can still borrow cheaply, Hollande's political capital appears to be draining. |
| Little is going right. He pushed through labour reforms that allowed companies to negotiate lower wages with unions, but were nowhere near as radical as the reforms that cost Gerhard Schroeder his job but set German industry on the road to recovery. Hollande's consensual approach has cut little ice at home. A de Gaulle-style presidential tour of La France Profonde to reconnect with "real voters" has done little to restore public confidence that he can rise to the challenge France faces. | Little is going right. He pushed through labour reforms that allowed companies to negotiate lower wages with unions, but were nowhere near as radical as the reforms that cost Gerhard Schroeder his job but set German industry on the road to recovery. Hollande's consensual approach has cut little ice at home. A de Gaulle-style presidential tour of La France Profonde to reconnect with "real voters" has done little to restore public confidence that he can rise to the challenge France faces. |
| To be fair, he has never had to lead from the front before. His experience and talent as party leader lay in keeping the balance between larger egos. But that is not going to help him now. A leader with wartime qualities is required. Improbable as it may have seemed 10 months ago, Nicolas Sarkozy is rising in the polls. He is even being talked about as the saviour-in-waiting. This surely says more about the volatility of public opinion than about the man himself, whose brash and ultimately woeful presidency the French surely could not have forgotten so quickly. | To be fair, he has never had to lead from the front before. His experience and talent as party leader lay in keeping the balance between larger egos. But that is not going to help him now. A leader with wartime qualities is required. Improbable as it may have seemed 10 months ago, Nicolas Sarkozy is rising in the polls. He is even being talked about as the saviour-in-waiting. This surely says more about the volatility of public opinion than about the man himself, whose brash and ultimately woeful presidency the French surely could not have forgotten so quickly. |
| But it also speaks to the collapse in confidence in Mr Hollande's judgment. Last night the minister responsible for fighting tax evasion, Jérôme Cahuzac, resigned after a judicial investigation was launched into allegations of an illegal Swiss bank account, claims that at one point in this saga he appeared to have survived. For Mr Hollande, it only gets worse. | But it also speaks to the collapse in confidence in Mr Hollande's judgment. Last night the minister responsible for fighting tax evasion, Jérôme Cahuzac, resigned after a judicial investigation was launched into allegations of an illegal Swiss bank account, claims that at one point in this saga he appeared to have survived. For Mr Hollande, it only gets worse. |
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