Ségolène et les éléphants socialistes

Marcel Berlins complains about the socialist “elephants” campaigning against current frontrunner Ségolène Royal to be the French left's candidate in next year's presidential election. Since cuurent polls say that Royal is the only candidate capable of beating the right's Nicholas Sarkozy, Berlins sees it as “electoral suicide” apparently to even go through the process of choosing an official candidate when pragmatism demands a coronation.

However, Berlins admits that – though it scarcely matters - "le ségolisme" does fall just short of perfection in one small respect: namely that “she has not yet explained her specific, thought-out policies on anything”.

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“Her speeches, and answers to media questioning, are rarely more than well-expressed platitudes. She has a book coming out soon which may (or may not) reveal her deeper thoughts on issues of public concern....".

To reveal your thoughts “on issues of public concern”....or not to bother. Such are the tough choices of modern politics.

But leaving such trifles to one side, Royal, for Berlins, remains the obvious choice. The point is that she'll win power; never mind what she'll do with it.

Elsewhere in the Guardian, commenting on the UK Labour Party's inability to rid itself of Tony Blair, Geoffrey Wheatcroft has an excellent article debunking the personality cult of Blair the election winner, who “[for] far too long...bedazzled Labour with the idea that, love him or hate him, he was a political wizard in a class of his own”, which looking at the factual record, as Wheatcroft eloquently explains, wasn't exactly the case. But in being so bedazzled, Wheatcroft says, Labour struck a Faustian pact with Blair “and thereby gave new meaning to the phrase 'more than they bargained for' “.

In any case, its worth remembering that election day in France is a long way off, and its unlikely that the polls will remain completely static between now and then. The fortunes of Sarkozy and his eventual rival during the campaign will change according to their respective performances, how the public take to their policies, unforseen events and so on. Will Royal stay silent on policy throughout? And if and when she does break her silence, what will be the public reaction? If - as seems likely from what little she has seen fit to share with the world of her political vision - she turns out, like Sarkozy, to be of the Blairite school - i.e. not a 'left' candidate at all - will France be quite so keen on her then?

And would choosing a non-left, non-socialist candidate be strictly the best choice for.....the socialist left? Clearly you need power to implement your policies, but the drive for power should be subservient to the choice of policy. Not the other way round, as Berlins would apparently have it.

Political discussion often neglects what genuinely democratic politics would actually consist of. In that theoretical scenario, Royal would set out her policies, they would be debated alongside everyone else's, and then the French left would make its decision on that basis. It may not be a surefire guarentee of attaining political power, but then - tiresome as it is - that's democracy.