Being anti-Sarkozy is not enough.

The moment Segolene Royal uttered the words "I wish the next President of France to..." my heart sank. What I already knew had happened, all I had hoped destroyed. I thought France knew better, I was wrong, but at the same time I knew that it couldn't have happened any other way. Now as M. Hortefeux pays immigrant families to leave France, Le Pen inspired ministries pop up and the European door smashes firmly shut on Turkey, the left in France has never faced a tougher internal and external challenge. The left must act now or face extinction.

ELECTORAL DEFEATS

The French socialist Party has not won a Presidential election since 1988 and after losing to the right wing Nicolas sarkozy a few weeks ago, they are likely to receive another bloody nose in the parliamentry elections this july. This twinned with the deep introspection and subsequent paralysis after the humiliating defeat of Lionel Jospin in april 2002 by the National Front candidate Jean Marie Le Pen, makes the future of the party look bleak. Some have blamed the latest shortcomings on a lack of ideological modernity within the party, a failure to grasp the new challenges which face our society and an unwillingness to accept that socialism died in 1991. Others on the other hand fear the party has lost it's electoral base, that it isn't looking out for the "little guy" which explains the trickling away of votes to the extremes and that it has betrayed the values and principles of the traditional left. These two currents within the party threaten to split it in half, one half defering to the center and the rest swinging the party to the left and crossing a political desert similar to that of Labour party under Micheal Foot.

CONSTRAINED BELIEFS AND INEXPERIENCE

Segolene Royal who mainly presented herself as the anti-sarkozy candidate during the election, contrasted strongly with a Sarkozy who seemed to draw strengh from a wide base of contrasting personalities and a strong backing from his party, advantages which Royal did not benefit from. The sheer strengh of a reinvigorated right wing with an incredibly controversial yet popular and hard talking leader, intimidated a damaged and unsure party with a inexperienced leader whose real social democratic beliefs were constrained by the very people who chose her.
She was laughed at for proposing to heavily sanction criminal youths by military training and for praising Tony Blair's economic and political record. From the very start she was given no leway for imposing her beliefs and was forced to present an old style socialist agenda with a tinge of social authoritairianism to pander to the extreme right, with hindsight it was a tragic and comical farce.

HUMILIATION AND DESERTION

Nicolas Sarkozy's appointment of Bernard Kouchner, a leading member of the socialist party, as minister for foreign affairs, was the coup de grace in splitting the french left. Though the post is devoid of much responsability, because it is the domain of the President and his advisor (Jean David Levitte, a famed atlantist), M. Kouchner's acceptance of the post was a huge blow to the center left cause. The vilification of the Sarkozy camp and the subsequent "desertion" by a leading social democrat to the Fillon Government, will paralyse the center of the party as they will be presented as pragmatists and moraly corrupt. So Strauss-Kahn's calls for an "effective, credible and concrete left", along with Royal's calls for the left to "rise above the old battlefields of the left", in effect calling for the socialist party to follow the third way, will fall on deaf ears. Former Prime Minister and disciple of Mitterand: Laurent Fabius cries for a left "to be proud of being anchored in the left" will appeal more to the defensive and humiliated party members.

THE LAST STAND

If the party falls into the hands of Laurent Fabius, the internal feuds continue and the social democrats do not rally together, the party will vanish. The 2007 election presented itself as the last stand of the old Socialist party, it now has an oppotunity to shake away the shakles of Mai 68, and renew itself by accepting change, real change. It must accept that the 35 hour week is an absurd piece of legislation, it must realise that the state and taxes are not the solution to everything. However it must continue in its fight to preserve France's internationaly renound services, to defend civil rights against the dangerously authoritairian nature of Sarkozy's social policies and most importantly it most continue European integration (including Turkey).
The new socialist party must be proud of its convictions and strong enough to bring its fight to new levels, or tomorrow we will mourn the death of the left in France. Being against something does not define you, nor do old hat ideas, dynamism and conviction define you. Today only Sarkozy seems to posess those qualities.