Now for the Elections

The election is over and Sarko has won. Yes the people do still have to vote but with the accurate opinion polls that we have in France there is no longer any doubt. No there will not be a ballot paper which says that you have two votes which you can cast for either candidate providing that you use only one of the two and only vote for one candidate. Unless you vote for neither in which case you can use both votes. So at 8 o’clock tomorrow evening you will be able to tune in to the tele and get the result. One wonders if the Brits will have finished counting the votes for their Thursday election by that time.

But that won’t be the end of elections. No we will immediately move on to the June legislative election. In the good old days we had Mitterrand saying, before election, that he wouldn’t dissolve Parliament if elected, only to do so once he gained power. Since the President now has a five year term the Presidential elections coincide with those of the legislature (though constitutionally they don’t have to) so we have to vote for new representatives anyway.

Once Sarko has been elected he will appoint a Prime Minister. Currently reckoned to be François Fillon, (Welsh wife to boot, so expect that we will go for Welsh independence once we have secured Scotland) who has been active in Sarko’s election from the earliest of times. (He was fired from the government by de Villepin because he couldn’t fire Sarko, such is politics) Fillon and his government will have only one objective, win the legislative elections for UMP. There will be political interest in seeing which measures he will push through before the election. A few of the popular ones no doubt, but don’t expect pension reform nor a reduction in bureaucrats.

For UMP the election should be pretty straight forward and the population generally gives a majority to the elected President. Though I suspect that it won’t be a landslide. A lot of people are nervous about Sarko and won’t want to give him carte blanche. The only issue for UMP will be how many seats to give UDF.

Bayrou will go ahead and set up his new party and rapidly disappear from serious politics, like every other person who has set up his own party. Chévénement, De Villiers, Mégret. In fact the only person who has succeeded is Le Pen. But then he had the good fortune to have an issue, massive immigration, which made his life reasonably simple. Not everybody wants to live next to a Brit family with the fish and chip fryer on 24 hours a day.

My eyes will be on the Socialists. What’s going to happen? There will be a few elephants with extremely long and sharp daggers out for Ségo. (Fabius, Emmanueli, Lang?, Strauss Kahn?) On the other hand the party has a large influx of new members who adhere to Ségo’s ideas. So I think it will be a fascinating session of good old fisticuffs. Of course the person who should lead the election campaign of the socialists is none other than Ségo’s common law husband, Hollande. Will he go with the pacte presidential, will he rubbish it? Anyway it is difficult to imagine there will be a united party behind a coherent programme. The most telling point for the future will be whether the new Ségo line is retained or whether we will return to crypto communism. I personally believe that the Socialists are finally going through their social democrat transition but will need a few more years in the wilderness before being electable.

It would be nice to see Ségo at least as Prime minister in a few years time. Who knows, if Sarko tips everybody into the street, he will have to dissolve parliament, the Socialists win the elections, and Sarko and Ségo finish up cohabiting. That would beat reality TV.