FRANCE’S LEFT-WING parties have taken full advantage of their victory in the first round of the regional elections by uniting their forces ahead of next Sunday’s run-off. Their good showing in nearly all the country’s metropolitan departments is inevitably taken as a commentary on President Nicolas Sarkozy’s record.
Although he has tried to remove himself from this campaign there is a real dissatisfaction over his failure to deliver on the promise of major change, shown in relatively high levels of abstention by those who supported him enthusiastically in 2007. The more prosaic and pragmatic exercise of power since then has dulled his appeal.
That said, the left had little to do but improve its position after the several humiliations Mr Sarkozy has visited upon them. His frontal assault on their values and policies gave him a definite momentum for reform in his first period in office.
Changes in education, the labour code and welfare rules at home,and abroad his realignment with Nato and the United States signalled a genuine shift in French policy and seemed to fulfil his potential.
His confident co-opting of left-wing notables like Bernard Kouchner, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Jack Lang disarmed his opponents. And his courtship and marriage to Carla Bruni ensured a rapt media which he has craved and pursued ruthlessly in other decidedly less romantic ways.
Mr Sarkozy was then blown off course by the world financial crisis and deepening recession of autumn 2008. Ironically its full impact on France was cushioned by strong social transfers and state action of which he was otherwise critical. Mounting unemployment and several policy U-turns took away much of his hyperactive lustre. Suddenly his popularity sank and his ability to shift attitudes became jaded in the popular imagination.
These elections – assuming their pattern is repeated next Sunday - reflect that disenchantment with Mr Sarkozy’s promise and represent a new turn towards left-wing alternatives. They could herald a national trend in the 2012 presidential elections.
Nevertheless Mr Sarkozy is probably right to deny such political extrapolations as premature and misplaced. It very much remains to be seen how the realignment between the Socialists, Greens and independent left achieved this week for electoral advantage endures.
There are real shifts in their relative fortunes, notably in the strong Green performance. The Socialists remain deeply fractured at leadership level and have yet to convince voters they can make a real difference.
And it would be a great mistake to underestimate Mr Sarkozy’s ability to revive his reputation or his hunger for power. He needs to rediscover his message of change and apply it in practice over the next two years.
His hint last week that it is time for a pause in the frenetic pursuit of reform in favour of a more considered strategy is intriguing and tantalising.
He can hardly reinvent himself. But 2012 remains very much his election to lose if he can refocus the appeal which brought him to power in 2007.