Nicholas Sarkozy won the French presidency decisively on a promise of radical economic change. His UMP party did not, however, secure the expected landslide in this week’s election for the National Assembly though it has a commanding majority. The electorate was clearly demonstrating its concern at the transformation that has been promised. State spending is to be slashed but so too are taxes. France is headed toward an enterprise economy in the British Thacherite style in which the state no longer cares for every citizen with generous health and welfare provisions, which even a strong economy such as France can no longer afford.
Emotionally, the French regret the promised passing of their old lifestyle, but intellectually, as their support for Sarkozy and his UMP demonstrates, they recognize the economic self-indulgence can no longer continue. That is not to say that the reforms will be painless. France’s still-powerful unions are likely to put up the same sort of fight as the miners in Britain did.
The cross-party ministry he has formed is one of all the talents. In Christine Lagarde, he has appointed France’s first female finance minister. The new minister for towns is an outspoken feminist Fadela Amara; the sports portfolio goes to Bernard Laporte, the coach of the French national rugby team and the human rights brief has gone to Rama Yade, a 30-year-old of Senegalese origin. Perhaps most significantly, the Justice Ministry goes to a woman of North African origin, Rachida Dati.
When he was minister of the interior, Sarkozy cracked down hard on rioting ethnic North Africans in the Parisian suburbs, calling them “scum.” During his presidential campaign, he hardly mellowed his vigorous determination to combat crime and disorder. He accepted, however, that unemployment and lack of opportunity lay behind disaffected youth and has asserted that his economic reforms will create work and confront deprivation. While he tries to turn the French ship of state around, the hope must be that his new justice minister will be seen to deal even-handedly and fairly with popular protest, especially among the young.
It is fair to wonder what glue will hold this political kaleidoscope together when the going gets tough — as it assuredly will. At the moment all ministers are probably hoping to use their offices to pursue their own policies as well as to support the government’s ambitious agenda. Sarkozy may believe that his broad-based administration will avoid the confrontation that Margaret Thatcher’s avowedly right-wing British Conservative Party experienced. We shall see. But whether France is changed as radically as Sarkozy proposes or whether his ambitious program is curtailed or even ultimately ruined by popular unrest and a change of heart among voters, it is certain that France is never going to be the same again. Even ten years ago, those who believed in root-and -branch reform were condemned for their unpatriotic Anglo-Saxon views. And now the country has voted for them.
