The French PM's declaration is a masterpiece of political window dressing

J.M. Ayrault, an excellent Prime minist used car salesman

French Prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault's first declaration of the New Year is vibrant, upbeat and almost inspiring in tone. Not only that, it seems to imply that France has finally found a political leader who realises that his country's institutions and economy are in desperate need of modernisation and that he intends to do something about it.

Let's see what he said in his rather chipper and seductive declaration, which was published by Le Monde.


Ayrault announced that he has a "working calendar" for the first quarter, during which he says he will create "a new French model" and that "France doesn't have to deny its own soul and character to get out of the crisis and get back its strength and world influence. [France must do more to] welcome risk-taking, economic and social innovation and the creation of companies..." Ayrault wishes to "carry out a fundamental renewal of the French model, adapt it to the present day and offer a new reality to its founding republican values, that which demands lucidity and courage. [...] It is incumbent upon the state to undertake the task of renewing our political, economic and social organisation [...] in order that France may rediscover its pride, cohesion and self-confidence....."

Now that IS impressive by any standards. Could France really have seen the light, smelt the coffee and decided to get real about its chronic long-term structural problems? Is this the dawning of a new age of French realism and courage? Of flexibility and change? Of modernism and confidence in the future?

Well no actually, it isn't. It's anything but.

A quick look at the five major tasks on the much-vaunted 'working calendar' for the three months to come shows that the declaration is in reality bereft of all concrete intention.

- Economic renewal and the fight for jobs
Ayrault promises to fight unemployment and create competitivity, but the government hasn't done anything to create any new jobs since it was elected. Not only that, the way he wants to go about the job is to have 'seminars' and make sure that all his ministers are concerned by the issues. Does he mean they weren't concerned before? As for seminars and meetings, that is precisely one of the cancers in French society. There are more committees and quangos in this government than there were grains of rice on my (copious) plate of sweet and sour prawns at lunchtime. No new ideas then, just more of the same vague and sibyllin platitudes. Fail.

- Bank reforms, as early as January
Really? There's nothing new here. Ayrault is referring here to a weak reformette that was decided towards the back end of last year. The reform was almost universally adjudged to be a heavily watered-down and almost ineffective measure compared to how it was presented during the 'bash the rich' election campaign. Not only that, the reform won't come into effect in January as it says in the advert. All they are going to do, as Ayrault says himself, is "debate it in January." *face palm* Fail.


- Reorganisation of schools, as early as January
A total piss-tak Not a cat's chance in hell of this one flying. And, again, nothing is to be actually done, all they're going to do is prepare a law project which will take forever to be debated in parliament and the senate, and even if it is voted, it will be withdrawn - as have almost all previous attempts to reform education in a meaningful way - when the teachers' unions start striking against it, as they inevitably shall. My god daughter's school basketball team stands more chance of winning the NBA title this year than Ayrault does of reforming the antedeluvian French education system. Fail.

- Revalorisation of the SMIC (minimum wage)
Another misrepresentaion. The SMIC is not going to be revalorised. All that's planned is to modify the decree which revalorises it, and that's a completely different matter. And even if it is modified who says that any revalorisation of the SMIC will follow? Vapidity personified and fail.

- Multi-mandate holders in parliament and the senate.
(For readers who don't fully understand this singularly aberrational French variation on the 'jobs for the boys' theme very well, here's an explanatory article I wrote about it a while back.) The idea is to eliminate or greatly reduce multi-mandating, but it will never happen. Governments have promised to do this since the year dotBC, and they have all gone back on their word. Besides, the government has already been warned by a large number of its own MPs that they will vote against any proposal of this nature, along with the opposition. Besides, let's not get over-excited here. All that's planned is a 'presentation of related dispositions' and that, last time I looked, does not mean they are planning an actual law. A bread-and-circuses exercise. Pfft, humbug on an industrial scale. In other words, fail.

This declaration is a manifesto for more of the same immobilism which has paralysed almost all French governments over the last 30 years. It is a masterclass of treading on water and making it look as if one were swimming. A sleight of hand. Fine words but no action. No money where the mouth is. It's the political equivalent of a dodgy used car saleman's spiel.

Be that as it may, this declaration does however have the merit of clearly informing us where the government intends to take the country over the next few months. In a word, this government clearly intends to take the country....

....nowhere.

Gérard Depardieu isn't the only 'shabby' individual in France

"Who art the shabbiest Sire, ye or I?"

Gérard Depardieu is (was?) one of France's best-paid actors. His long career has seen him perform in 170 films and pick up two Césars for best actor as well as a Goden Globe for best actor and many other awards at film festivals around the world. The other side of the coin is his fiery personality and reputation as a heavy drinker, which have often led to some rather unflattering headlines along the lines of 'Depardieu urinates on floor in airliner/punches a photographer/crashes his scooter whilst drunk.' In other words, he is a rather singular man.

Enter the Hollande administration with its promises to tax the rich at 75%, introduce stiff new taxes for businesses and adopt a populist anti-rich stance, all of which were designed to extend Hollande's 'honeymoon period' after being elected. This policy has resulted in an exodus of wealthy French businessmen and others, who have left for kinder economic climes, taking their money with them and thus rendering the whole exercise relatively self-defeating. But no matter, the hunt for the rich is on and the government hopes that the public will notice and approve of its actions.

Depardieu joined the long queue to leave and eventually bought a house in a small town in Belgium just next to the French border. His decision resulted in a barrage of criticism from the government which reached boiling point last week when PM Jean-Marc Ayrault called his actions 'rather shabby', and incensed Socialists are now calling for people like Depardieu who leave the country for tax reasons to be stripped of their French nationality and made to pay a hefty 'exit tax.' Hollande has even gone so far as to bully his smaller Belgian neighbour and ask it to start taxing its rich residents more heavily.

Depardieu finally responded to the heavy flak today in an irony-laden open letter in the French press in which he denounces Ayrault's remarks, says that the government's anti-rich policies are punishing "success, creation and talent" in France and angrily declares that  he's sending his French passport back to the government in protest, giving up his French nationality, and forfeiting his rights to Social Security aid.

Now I am no fan of Depardieu believe you me, be it his acting or his personality, and his actions do indeed remind one of 'rats leaving the sinking ship' but this affair does at least have the merit of cristallising the ugly undercurrent of venimous class sentiment which has begun to permeate French society over the last year or so.

Things were bad enough under Sarkozy, when the country almost had a nervous breakdown so obssessed were the French about the polarising effect he was believed to be having on the country. This is why the French didn't so much elect Hollande as evict Sarkozy. They would have voted for your alcoholic neighbour as long as he or she was anti-Sarkozy.

But the atmosphere has become even worse since, and the current administration seems to be intent on using the rich as their whipping boy, their scapegoat for all that is wrong with the country. Of  course the rich deserve some stiff scriticism as well as more taxes and stricter laws on finance - after all, we're all paying more so why not them? - but the current and heavy-handed clumsy witch-hunt approach is not working, the public knows it, and it won't extend Hollande's honeymoon for long.

Take the vindictive words of the government's class-warfare militant and Minister for Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg who, during the recent negotiations over the future of the Florange Steelworks and its jobs, acrimoniously declared that the company who owns them, Mittal, "was not welcome in France", that it "lied" habitually, that it owed "astronomical' sums of money to the taxman (without offering any evidence for either) and that "we don't want Mittal in France any more." He went on to unilaterally announce that the government would renationalise the site.

Montebourg and other ministers have shown a similar disdain for other large companies and rich individuals recently, but Montebourg's latest cack-handed outburst proved to be too much even for this government and president, who disowned his words for fear of a negative backlash from foreign investors, both current and potential.

The last thing France needs right now is to scare off investors by declaring full-scale war on them and the rich in general. This shabby rabble-rousing tactic is already blowing up in their faces and the government will regret it before next summer.

So where's the opposition, whose job it is to act as a democratic counterbalance to government? They are nowhere to be seen of course because their actions are just as shabby as those of their opponents.

The UMP has been hijacked by Jean-François Copé, its self-proclaimed leader who only sits in the party president's chair because of a blatant fraud perpetrated by his henchmen during the recent internal party presidential election. This man is arrogantly defying the wishes of the 80% of his party members and about the same percentage of the public who are demanding a rerun of the election. He is a political bandit whose banana-republic mentality is a disgrace not only to his party but to French politics as a whole.

Not that the Socialists can criticise them too loudly of course (and they have been wise enough not to moreover), because their own party leader was not even 'elected.' He was quite simply parachuted in as the head of the party by a troika of top Socialists who designated him during an hour-long secret meeting in some office or another in the parliament building. No internal election, no opportunity for rank-and-file members to express their preferences. If that's not shabby behaviour I don't know what is.

But perhaps the most illustrative example of boorish behaviour in French politics during this government's tenure came on the very first day of the new parliament, a day upon which all elected parliamentarians are held to respect the parliamentary tradition which demands that they all shake the hand of all first-time députés during a special welcoming ceremony. But they shamefully refused to follow this tradition of common courtesy and refused to shake the hands of the only two Front National députés in parliament, both of whom had been elected for the first time.

That was a disgrace. Make no mistake, I have no truck for the hateful policies of this, an extreme-right wing party, but whether we like it or not these two French citizens were given their parliamentary mandates by other French citizens in a free and open election, and all politicians in any civilised parliament owe it to those who voted for them them to respect the democratically-expressed decision of the people and refrain from ostracising legally-elected political opponents in such an insulting manner.

Yes, Depardieu's behaviour is reprehensible in some respects, and yes, tighter fiscal laws and control for the rich and big business must be introduced, and quickly, but when one looks at who is giving them lessons on civilised and respectful behaviour the only word which comes to mind is 'hypocrisy.'

The French word for 'shabby', or 'pathetic' is 'minable', and I can't begin to count the number of times I have discussed French politics, multinational business practice and tax-exiling rich elites with friends and others only to hear 'minable' used to describe them.

No wonder then that just under 80% of French citizens declare in polls that they are sick to death of the behaviour of their political and other elites, and no wonder either that the Hollande-Ayrault tandem has reached the lowest level of popularity of any administration since the beginning of the 5th Republic.

'Minable'? They all are, the whole lot of 'em, and I wouldn't trust any of 'em as far as I could chuck 'em.....

French PM Ayrault actually gets annoyed about something!

It's enough to put you off baguettes for life

I nearly fell off my chair when I read his words. Could these really be the words of long-serving Socialist dozy party-line plodder and faithful servant-cum first thus expendable Prime Ministerial scapegoat Jean-Marc Ayrault?

He is talking about an article in The Economist about the French economy when he suddenly and uncharacteristically blasts an all-guns broadside plus missiles for good measure full of vitriolic anger which, could words alone kill an international news magazine, would have vaporised The Economist in an instant and orphaned all its subscribers and readers.

Asked by a German TV station to comment the article he replies "you're talking about a mere newspaper and the excessive exaggeration it uses to sell its paper and I'm telling you that France couldn't care less."

Okay okay, don't hit me I'm wearing glasses! Fair enough, we know where you stand Jean-Marc.

The article he was referring to contains scathing scriticism of the way the French economy is being handled under François Hollande. The headline and standfirst read;

The time-bomb at the heart of Europe
Why France could become the biggest danger to Europe's single currency

It goes on to say in so many words that Hollande and his policies are even worse than catching ebola, that he eats grannies for breakfast, that he has pictures of both Stalin and Hitler on his Elysée office wall and that he would like to see the whole of Europe thrown into economic anarchy and civil insurrection. Well, it nearly does.

Now I'm no expert on economic matters but I have been following Hollande and his government's progress since they came into power.

And that's why I'm telling you, Jean-Marc, that it looks to me like the pressure is getting to you. You and your prez have been urged since you were elected by France, Europe, the World and its dog to do something about the appallingly imbalanced state of your economy instead of merely standing around like gnomes in a garden.

And you may have mistakenly believed that the measures that Hollande announced a few days ago to help businesses to live were enough to take the heat off, at least for a month or two.

But they aren't, and that's why you were rattled by the article. That, and the fact that you, as a former (and deservedly much-appreciated and successful it must be said) mayor of a major French city know full well how to run a budget.

Which means you also know that Hollande and your government are not going to finish U-turning on your election promises anytime soon. For the sake of France I sincerely hope that you and Hollande will succeed in getting France out of the hole, however many U-turns it takes.

Bonne chance...

Welcome news on France's abusive stop and search laws

French police check the ID of a man with suspicious-looking glasses

The manner in which stop and search checks are carried out in France has long been a matter of serious public concern, because not only can the police stop and search anyone they wish, they do so with an almost total lack of accountability.

Police officers here are not currently required to identify themselves to those they are searching or whose ID they are checking, and nor do they wear their numbers or any other identifying insignia on their uniforms. This means that should they abuse their position of authority during checks it is very difficult to trace them afterwards. This has led to accusations that some officers may have the impression that they can get away with abusive behaviour.

Another major concern is that stop and search checks are carried out almost uniquely on the basis of racial profiling, despite police claims to the contrary. I have lost count of the number of checks I have witnessed over the years, but I cannot recall a single instance where the person being controlled was anything other than someone of Maghrebi, African, or other manifestly foreign origin.

But all this may soon be a thing of the past with the news, announced by Interior minister Manuel Valls and publically supported by Prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, that legislation is being prepared which will require police to issue a receipt to the person being controlled. Mandatory information would include the officer's name, number, details of where and when the check took place, and the name and racial origin of the person being controlled.

Police unions and other representatives are of course furious at this prospect, although they shouldn't be. They claim that they are being stigmatised as racists, but the introduction of this system will mean that they will have the chance to either prove that they are not, or change their ways if they are. Either way it will improve their image in the long term, given the results of trials carried out in other countries.

The statistical results of testing in other European countries clearly demonstrate that whereas checks clearly targeted ethnic minorities as a priority at first, tactics slowly changed over time, to the point where checks on indigenous members of the population are now more common than they were before, and they actually result in a higher conviction rate for offences than do checks on ethnic minorities.

This was a very courageous announcement for Valls to make, and not only because he admirably chose to state clearly that he had been directly inspired by Anglo-Saxon laws on the matter (French pride and politicians are normally loath to admit that they are influenced by anything Anglo-Saxon.)

The proposed legislation is also to be applauded because of its timing. The way in which French elections are organised - with just a few weeks separating the presidential and legislative parliamentary elections - means that that the country lives in a sort of legislative limbo during this period. This explains why President François Hollande has not yet unveiled some of the more controversial economic belt-tightening policies that he will be forced to announce once the elections are over.

Both he and Prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault are to be admired for their willingness to take an electoral risk vis-à-vis centrist and floating voters by backing Manuel Valls in his efforts to impose more police accountability for stop and search checks. The French police have, up to now, been relatively free to act anonymously, and I for one am happy that this era may soon be over.

Hollande's choice of Ayrault for PM was a 'normal' one

'We are the Champions my (normal) Friend"

Few people outside of France had heard of Jean-Marc Ayrault before he was appointed as Prime minister by the newly-elected and self-styled 'normal' president, François Hollande. Indeed, he was hardly a household name even here in France. So how and why did this relatively discreet socialist end up as the second most powerful man in France?

Ayrault was born to working-class parents 61 years ago and was educated in the state school system before obtaining a degree in German and becoming a German teacher. Politics soon beckoned however, and he joined the Socialist party in 1971. Being elected as Mayor of Saint-Herblain in 1977 meant that he was the youngest mayor, at 27, of any town with a population of over 30,000, and it was was onwards and upwards from then on.

His work as mayor and as a regional councillor for the Loire-Atlantique region was well appreciated and that made it inevitable that he would eventually be selected as a parliamentary candidate. And so it was that he became the Deputé for Loire-Atlantique in 1986 before going on to be re-elected four times. He was also elected four times as Mayor of Nantes, starting in 1989. Perhaps his biggest achievement however was being chosen as President of the Socialist parliamentary group in 1997, and he remained in this post until Hollande appointed him as Prime minister two days ago.

Although Ayrault's career path had always followed a steady and upwards trajectory, he was hardly a political meteorite, and the French public were largely unaware of his activities. This is because he always remained faithful to his region and city, never actively looking to get himself parachuted into, say, a seat in Paris, where he would have been more exposed to the media. Nor did he ever push noisily for the party leadership. At the same time his relative discretion in a party which has always been characterised by noisy and nasty internecine spats ensured that he remained largely hidden from public scrutiny.

All of which explains why Ayrault's name was almost never to be seen in political popularity polls, and it's also why he never figured in polls which asked the public to choose a Socialist prime minister in the event that Holland would win the election. And even after Hollande's election, when Holland aides began leaking Ayrault's name as a possible contender, he was far from being the public's choice, probably because so little was known about him compared to the favourites - Martine Aubry, Manuel Valls and Laurent Fabius.

What the public and the press were unaware of however, was that Hollande was not looking for a popular figure to become Prime minister. He wanted a centre-leftist like himself, a man capable of a consensual approach, and Ayrault is exactly that, a hard-working party workhorse who has adopted a docile centre-left line since he was elected mayor for the first time. He also supported Hollande unfailingly during the campaign. All three favourites were eliminated because none of them are naturally consensual, Valls being to far to the right, Aubry too far to the left, and Fabius too much of a maverick, and none of them could be trusted to implement Hollande's wishes down to the last letter.

In choosing Jean-Marc Ayrault, Hollande has chosen a reassuring and uncontroversial figure, and that is essential to the policy line he will adopt for the upcoming legislative elections. It is no means a given that the Socialists will win, but Ayrault, as well as being someone who will not rock the boat or cause controversy, is also someone who could appeal to centrists such as Bayrou supporters. His relative modesty will be needed to persuade voters that the tandem he represents with Hollande shall be a 'normal' one which is capable of getting down to work without being distracted by petty squabbles or controversial outbursts.

After five years of Sarkozy's bling-bling wrecking-ball style, Hollande is striving to come across as a 'normal' president, with a 'normal' Prime minister, and that, after all, is not only quite 'normal', it could also prove to be very effective.