Chirac loses again

The results from the first ballot, indicating unprecedented left-wing gains in the regional elections on the back of popular discontent and a Spanish-style growth in turnout, were, if anything, amplified even further yesterday. The Socialists and their allies won 18 of the 20 metropolitan regions (and Corsica is, frankly, weird, so it hardly counts) - a far cry from the pitiful two they held as recently as 1992. Other local elections saw departments such as Ille-et-Vilaine turn left-wing for the first time since 1848 - which is to say, given the nature of politics before that, most of which didn’t involve any kind of democracy, ever.

This isn’t because everyone suddenly loves the Socialists. Far from it. It’s because Chirac is incapable of governing France for more than 2 years on a trot.

Named Prime Minister in 1974, he lasted two years before Giscard fired him (Chirac’s revenge was to run against Giscard in 1981, helping Mitterrand win his first, historic Presidential term). When Mitterrand’s government started doing badly, Chirac ran a Thatcherite campaign in the 1986 general election - and promptly managed to throw away any public support he had, with the wily Mitterrand thrashing him in the subsequent 1988 Presidential election.

By 1995 Chirac was in a much better situation and was able, on his third attempt, to win the Presidential election, promising to heal the “social fracture”. Then, once in government, he appointed Alain Juppé as his Prime Minister, started cutting taxes and reigning in spending, and got pretty much everyone from the public sector and a fair number of private sector employees in the streets. After 2 years, Chirac decided to call early general elections under the impression that he’d win a new majority in Parliament; instead, he lost dramatically and had to sit out 5 years of a Jospin government.

And now he’s done it again. The French voters have most dramatically said that they do not like the current government’s policies, which appear to be to blatantly pander to their electorate while snubbing anyone who looks vaguely pink, try and balance the budget at the same time as cutting income tax (which means a cut in income tax is accompanied by a rise in petrol taxes), and generally make a fool of themselves.

Oh, and Chirac’s tendency to pick fights with with members of his party (Séguin, Balladur, soon Sarkozy) or be such a crook that even if he doesn’t get caught, his cronies do (Juppé), means that there’s nobody left in the French right that could reasonably take over from Raffarin.

What a clown.