Over the summer, President Sarkozy and the French Government have deported about 1,000 Roma people to Romania and Bulgaria. The mass expulsion of a community (based on ethnicity), the likes of which we have not seen in Europe since the Second World War, was duly met with widespread condemnation.

The European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution that Sarkozy put a stop to his expulsion of the Roma, calling the measures “discriminatory and contrary to Community law” and pointing out that that collective expulsions violate European law because they discriminate based on race.” So the question of whether this was a good or bad, legal or illegal is essentially over.

However, in an article on LabourList (here) Claude Moreas MEP made only the most superficial analysis of the political situation in France, which was callous at best and wrong at worst; so what I hope to do in this article is explain in detail the political reasons why Sarkozy ordered the Roma expulsion.

Part One : A Classic Power Struggle

Unsurprisingly, the motive for the Roma Expulsions can be traced to the beginning of summer between a minister and his contemporary, both of whom have their power bases where I live in Nice.

Christian Estrosi, the Mayor of Nice, an MP and Minister for Industry has always been a close friend of Nicolas Sarkozy. Estrosi, locally, has a friend called Eric Ciotti, who used to be his parliamentary aide until he was installed as President of the General Council (the Department of the Alpes-Maritimes) as a sort of deputy figure, and also became an MP.

Ciotti became the darling of his right-wing UMP party, earning the creative nickname “Monsieur Sécurité” thanks to his plans to punish the parents of troublesome teens. Meanwhile, Estrosi was involved in an expenses scandal over his daughters Parisian apartment. Appearing several times consecutively in Le Canard Enchainé (that’s like Private Eye) means the press smells blood.

So the apprentice began to eclipse the master. With a big reshuffle on the way, Estrosi was terrified that he would be kicked out and, even worse, that he would be made the junior partner to Ciotti. Even worse than that would be if Ciotti were to become Interior Minister – the classic springboard to the Presidency.

Estrosi had to catch up. He had to show that he could out-do Ciotti on security. He launched an attack way outside his brief with a plan to punish “laxist” mayors who didn’t do enough to protect their towns. It was born out of the Grenoble incident and at the same time a jab at the Socialist Party leader, Martine Aubry, the mayor of Lille who has no security cameras in the streets. (Crime dropped by 0.9% in Aubry’s Lille compared to 0.5% in Estrosi’s Nice, by the way.)

Part Two: The Big Red Security button

In his LabourList piece, Moreas claimed that Sarkozy was

“Playing politics with peoples’ lives, he has reinforced his centre right constituency, attracting votes from people who may otherwise have been happier with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s ‘Front National’. As a strategy it’s working.”

What the Labour MEP forgot to add is that in March there will be elections for the departments (Cantonales for the Conseil Général). More importantly, these elections will be the last electoral test before the Presidentials in 2012.

However, Moreas was wrong to think that the “Steal Front National votes” strategy is working. Think back to last March and the Regional Elections, it was the FN that was able to steal UMP votes after a disastrous debate on National Identity. The Socialists won 21 out of 22 Regions.

So on the one hand we have the upcoming elections, and on the other we have the ministerial financial scandal “l’Affaire Woerth” that Sarkozy has been desperate to get off the front pages. He needed an opportunity to change to a higher gear.

Part Three : The Roma scapegoat

I wrote about the Grenoble incident nearer the time (a Roma was killed by a policeman which provoked other Roma to commit acts of vandalism), remarking that I thought it was strange that the President would get so involved in a relatively minor event.

I hope it’s clear now that I have put it in the wider context. This was the spark that lit the bonfire. Sarkozy had everything he needed to push the debate away from corruption and economics to security and immigration. Suddenly the Roma were perfect targets.

I return to the piece from Claude Moreas MEP:

“In fact, I recently led a delegation to meet Eric Besson, the French Europe Minister. [...] Sarkozy will not worry too much – he sees his actions as popular amongst centre and far right voters in France. As with the burka ban, he knows too that French Socialists may not go out on a limb to make this a national election issue.”

Two embarrassing and worrying errors here. Most concerning is the simple error that Eric Besson is not the French Europe Minister, he is in fact the Minister for Immigration, Integration and National Identity. This is important to understand not just because the Labour MEP didn’t know to whom he was talking, but moreover the title of “Immigration and National Identity” deliberately implies that the first is a menace to the second.

The other error is the claim that the Socialists won’t oppose the expulsions very seriously. It’s wrong because they (we?) have done, last Saturday in Nice alone around 5,000 people from the Socialists to the Greens to the Trade Unions to Human Rights organisations protested in the streets. Nice, I remind you, is one of the most pro-Sarkozy places in the country, and the home of dear Christian Estrosi.

Conclusion

For the elections, it is likely that the Roma will not be a central issue though, largely due to the fact that it has backfired spectacularly against Sarkozy. I think the Socialists will be more likely to use it as an example to paint the government as anti-republican. In any case, the Socialists would be wise not to rise to the bait but keep attacking on the Economy and Pension Reform.

The events this summer have brought shame on the French Republic, and Sarkozy has assaulted its key values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity for his own cynical purposes. Certainly, the March elections will make an exciting run up to the 2012 Presidentials.

This political year in particular will be important. With the Presidential elections in mid 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy is coming to the end of his first mandate, and at present his second one is by no means a fait accompli.

So to set the agenda for the coming political year, here are the 10 main hurdles Sarkozy needs to overcome as we enter the last lap of his Presidency.

1. The Reshuffle

Nicolas Sarkozy’s intentions to replace his Prime Minister have been announced several times, though Francois Fillon still remains in Matignon.

Fillon has proven more difficult to get rid of than Sarkozy and his friends would like. The Prime Minister’s personal approval ratings have shown that he’s one of the most popular right-wing figures in France and notably more so than the President. As a figure of responsibility, stability and sensibility within the UMP party, he has often had to play the fireman after Sarkozy’s incendiary comments.

Nevertheless, the reshuffle will be the last chance Sarkozy has to appoint another Prime Minister and organise the team that will take him into the elections.

2. L’affaire Woerth that won’t go away

Like the MPs’ expenses scandal, L’affaire Woerth was a scandal that could not have come at a worse time. Just in time for the summer, it was the perfect gift to any journalist who needed to fill a front page or an editorial. Also like MPs’ Expenses, it was more of a political scandal than a judicial one as the rules were not technically broken but certainly had their structural integrity tested.

As a relatively complex financial scandal, details and speculation kept the story going. What is particularly damaging for Sarkozy is that because of its complexity, few will understand but all will disapprove. Segolene Royal called the government corrupt on prime-time news, which was then backed up by a particularly worrying poll for the President.

3. A poor economic recovery

Unemployment has always been a problem in France (several theories why) and now it’s higher than ever at around 9.5%. This contributes to a massive deficit of 8%, which means that the government won’t be able to offer any pre-election giveaways.

A piecemeal return to growth, which is unlikely to exceed 1.4% in 2010 (compare it to the 3% expected from Germany), won’t help either of these two problems.

4. A Socialist Revival

After an extraordinary showing in March 2009 in the Regional Elections and a surprising show of unity during their party conference in La Rochelle, the media narrative of the Socialist Party has turned from a Party in terminal decline to a Party revived and ready to win the presidency for the second time in history… as long as they can find a suitable candidate.

5. Pension Reform

Sarkozy’s plans to raise the legal retirement age from 65 to 67 have put him on the wrong side of the populist argument. On September the 7th, he was faced with a nationwide strike.

I can’t explain in words how serious the situation in France is at the moment, but let me try and illustrate how important the issue is. Nice, a very rich and right-wing city in the most pro-Sarkozy department in the country, saw between 20,000 and 30,000 people take to the streets. Multiply that from Lille to Toulouse, and you might get the picture.

6. Disquiet in the ranks

If Fillon caused Sarkozy some trouble by trying to put out the fire, the rest of the UMP grandees have been lighting some more matches. Three of Chirac’s Prime Ministers, Juppé, de Villepin and Raffarin have all been ready to criticise various aspects of governmental policy. It looks like the centrists in the party will not be writing Sarkozy a blank cheque any longer.

7. The Roma and the Republic

This deserves a longer post, but Sarkozy has assaulted Marianne (the female personification of the French Republic) in his forcible deportation of the Roma. Even the Pope, the most reactionary man on the planet, has condemned the policy. Even the European Parliament, with its right-wing majority, condemned the policy in a single afternoon.

Let’s hope Sarkozy had a nice holiday, because he’s got his work cut out for him this year.

It’s one of the major reasons why in 2002, Chirac and Le Pen ran their campaigns  on security, which made the distinctly un-authoritarian Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin loook quite far out to sea.

Sarkozy, with a distinctly more right wing agenda than Chirac ever ran, has moved from one enemy to the next.

First, he came for the racaille, which roughly translates as ‘scum’ or perhaps more appropriately the ‘chavs’. Then he went after the burka, a post I’ll write soon enough.

His next target to divert attention from his flailing popularity ratings is to attack… the gypsies!

It follows from this weekend in Loir-et-Cher, where the police shot a gypsy in a road-block related incident. Upset by this, the ‘travallers’ began a rampage of vandalism in the local villages.

This morning in Cabinet, he thus announced a special meeting on the 28th to “tackle the problems posed by ‘travellers’ and their behavior” while also announcing the expulsion of all ‘irregular’  encampments.

Sarko’s “hyperpresidentialism” is well known, but I really do not consider this, though unacceptable, to be an event worthy of such a large amount of attention from the President of the French Republic. At the very limit, it’s something for the Prime Minister, and certainly more in the domain of the Interior Minister (that’s the Home Secretary.)

I come back to my introduction for a moment; the French right always plays on fear, and is an expert in focusing on a detail to turn it into a generalisation. It scares people.

The next issue is that he called the entire community gens du voyage which I translate as ‘travellers’ or at least ‘travelling people’. It of course supposed to imply that the entire group have no fixed domicile, don’t pay taxes, don’t have incomes (fortune telling not included) yet do have cars and spend a lot of time begging.

The French have never liked gypsies (they’re not French, after all), but for Sarkozy to start finger-wagging at such a group, no matter how marginal and poorly integrated (probably their fault as much as the French’s) at what is quite simply just delinquency and petty crime, which are by no means rare activities, seems misleading to me.

Francophones might like to read this piece from a journalist at Le Figaro as well, here.

As Jean-Marie steps down as leader, there are two candidates ready to take his place. In first position, with J-M’s backing, is his daughter Marine Le Pen, a blond 41 year old, who can carry on the family business of fascist populisum.  The other contender is a man called Bruno Gollinisch, a 60 year old holocaust denier and long-time colleague of J-M.

Les Pens: Jean-Marie and Marine

Marine managed to win a decent score in March, rivalling her UMP competitor with about 19% each, which could be attributed again to the family brand and protest votes, but it remains a significant achievement.

A recent poll for Libération (the newspaper) showed that 64% of the French people believe, as Ségolene Royal (a socialist) claimed, that the government is corrupt, after a series of scandals and policy failures.

The Front was too happy to join in the condemnation, because it is this sort of discourse that they have perfected. Nobody benefits more than from the idea that the main parties are corrupt  than extremists, be they Front National or Lib Dem (not that I would compare the two, since the FN never threw out their principles to join a conservative government, after all.)

Yet since 2002, the Front has never been able to repeat its surprising score in the those Presidentials. This was partly because Sarkozy moved his party and government to the right to steal some far-right votes, yet it didn’t last for long and they soon moved back home.

So although JM is on his way out, it is far too early to say that the FN has had its day. 2012 looks ever more exciting.

De Villepin and Sarkozy are old enemies. Everytime Sarkozy thinks he has beaten de Villepin for good, he just keeps coming back. For a year and a half, de Villepin has been out of politics, having been implicated (but acquitted) in the Affaire Clearstream (a financial scandal around the Elysée) and a slander trial, in which Sarkozy was co-plaintiff.

It is assumed that the new party, or rather, new group, such is the way French politics works, will be a mechanism to damage further Sarkozy and thus make his candidacy more credible. Sarkozy’s UMP party are likely to support him as their candidate for re-election.

Nobody expects de Villepin to win. Predictions are around 5-7%. The newspaper Libération (the one I read) carried a few polls inside that suggested there was some strong support for him, but nothing significant. His support base comes from his different style to Sarkozy, seen as much more of a diplomatic intellectual compared to the bling-bling president.

The most shocking effect his result could produce is to deny the UMP a place in the second round of the Presidentials.

The Socialists seem to have kept their act together following their regional successes (give it time…), all they need to do now is select a credible candidate and they could be in with a very good chance of victory.

The Greens have a lot of momentum behind them now, after two significant advances in the European and Regional elections (June 2009 and March 2010) but will mostly support the Socialists, at least in the second round.

The focus will be on the Front National. Perhaps one of the greatest failures of Sarkozy is the way he dealt with the fascists, by moving his party closer to them in order to steal some votes. It worked in 2007 and in 2009, but they have now stood him up. The FN showed that they were still live and kicking in the Regionals, and though Jean-Marie Le Pen won’t be the candidate, his daughter might be able to sustain a high enough score.

As a conclusion, it is thus worth considering that we may see a bizarre reversal of 2002. Back then, the Socialist were knocked out in Round One, leaving a UMP (then known as the RPR) vs Front National battle.

If de Villepin manages to attract enough support, he might finally get his revenge against Sarkozy: a humiliating first-round defeat that leads to a Socialist-Fascist fight, and then a Socialist President.

John Hutton, a former Labour minister who has been appointed as “chair of a new public sector pension commission” joining Labour MP Frank Field’s appointment as a “Povery Tzar”.

Prescott called them both “Collaborators.”

A piece on LabourList (here) did not approve of such language. Au contraire, I respond.

Prescott, not always known for his eloquence, found exactly the right word.

The first note I want to make is that the comment comes just after June 18, the 70th anniversary of the “Appel du 18 juin” where General Charles de Gaulle escaped to London and made his famous speech calling for the French to resist defeat and carry on fighting. More on that later.

Nicolas Sarkozy came over to meet David Cameron to mark the occasion, which brings me on to the French connection:

When Sarkozy was first elected in 2007 as the President of France, he tried the same tactics that Cameron is using now. In a move called ouverture he attracted a few high profile Socialists into the government. Obviously and appropriately, they were expelled from the Parti Socialiste, though that was because they became proper ministers rather than committee-type people.

Although it is in the news now, it ultimately means nothing more than a quick headline grab to cause instability in the Opposition. Popular and welcome Mr Field is in the Parliamentary Labour Party (cough), his sudden change of heart (cough cough) is no great defection.

Just as for a lesson for the future, Eric Besson (a poached-socialist) is one of the most unpopular ministers in the already unpopular French government, and intellectual magazine Le Point was forced on its front page to ask of Sarkozy the question: “Is really he SO crap?”

History is brilliant.

Update: John Prescott responded this evening via Twitter to tell me he did know it.

She claimed that she would not decide to stand alone, but would instead consult with the other main leaders of the Parti Socialiste in France, namely the Chief Secretary (leader) Martine Aubry and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, probably the best man for the job of taking out a gravely weakened Sarkozy in 2012.

On the one hand, I certainly hope it is true that she will not stand, as she is loved by some and hated by others. Personally I do not think she is the right candidate; she lost to Sarkozy in 2007 and her stock has not increased since then. Just looking at the Regional Election results, it becomes clear that the Socialists can take control of the presidency provided, as I have often said, that they can get their act together. For this, Royal is far too divisive.

It should thus be a simple task to choose the best candidate for taking on an, shall we say, emasculated, president. Royal is categorically not the right person as she does not command a broad enough coalition of support outside of her own cult within the PS. Aubry has had a much improved reputation in the media since the Regional success, but she just isn’t presidential material.

Imagine, if you will, a reverse of 2002; in the second round, instead of the UMP candidate and the Front National, we see a match between the Socialist and the Fascist.

Sarkozy has finally made his mark on French history, it was thanks to him the Left won its highest score since the formation of the fifth republic (1958). Isn’t it beautiful?

In PACA, I’m delighted to say we won our corner. Results from France 3, because I spent the evening in their TV studio in Nice:

Michel Vauzelle (44%)
Thierry Mariani (33%).
Jean-Marie Le Pen (23%)

Abstention dropped from around 53% last week to 48,81%

President Sarkozy will meet with Prime Minister Fillion, it is presumed he will resign. I noted last week that Fillion would be the one to jump, despite that fact it is Sarkowy who has been governing. It is rather unfair considering Fillon is more popular than Sarkozy.

A longer post will follow tommorow.

The lead is not restricted to PACA though, as the PS is widely expected to guard its monopoly over regional government, perhaps even taking control Alsace and Corsica as well.

Below is a map that shows the results from the previous elections in 2004, and in 1998:

Polls generally put the Socialists around two or three points ahead for the first round, and once the Greens, MoDem, and Front National parties get knocked out on Sunday, we’ll see a straightforward duel between the Parti Socialiste and the UMP.

I was generally expecting an unpleasant prognosis for the PS, as the (predicted) success is probably more despite the leadership of the party than because of it, which confirms my general perception of French Politics: decentralised campaigns for a centralised state. The PS in particular is very weak and ineffective at a national level (see the problems between Segolene Royal and Martine Aubry), yet incredibly effective at a regional and local level, there still remains many nigh-unconquerable socialist bastions.

So the PS is likely to win in spite of itself, with the real emphasis of the vote going to punish Sarkozy midway through his presidential term. His right-wing Union pour un Movement Populaire has also suffered from the disastrously explosive debate on National Identity, hijacked by far-right.

What we have seen is a huge change in media narrative. Following its paltry score of 16% in the EU Parliament elections in June, the press declared that the Parti Socialiste was now a party in terminal decline, predicting that the Greens (Les Verts) would become the new party of opposition. Instead, the storyline has reversed, and now points to a resurgence after a long period of self-reflection.

Typically, it is the Right and Far-Right which profits from and occupies itself with concerns over identity. Excluding Gordon Brown’s occasional remarks on possibly considering planning a “British Day” and citizenship classes, British National identity tends to be restricted to the hard-line Eurosceptic Tories and UKIPpers as a means to denounce the European Union and the core campaign front of the British National Party.

In France, by contrast, National Identity has been a strong recurring theme since President de Gaulle in the 1960s. Even now, Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a campaign for a ‘great debate on National Identity’ in events organised across the country.

However, though I am well known for clear opinions and a willingness to discuss contentious issues in free, pluralistic and useful debate, Sarkozy’s campaign has none of these three traits. It is not free because it is his government which sets the agenda, asks the questions and controls the answers. It is not pluralistic because it tries to hammer diversity into a single rigid identity. It is not useful because it is nothing but a divisive tool designed to stigmatise foreigners.

National Identity, as opposed to regional identity, is an artificial Napoleonic concept. As such, it is driven by the state as a means to define a citizen’s place in order to encourage and pressure people into conformity and submission.

Identity is not assigned, fixed and then closed; it is based on a set of political and social principles which are open and organic. This is why the EU struggles time after time to create a European Identity. The French Republic, above all else, is founded on its liberty of expression, its equality of rights and its fraternity of people. Equally, Britain is based on values of justice, tolerance and respect.

Thus the Far Right can only profit from National Identity using an outdated and narrow definition. As part of Sarkozy’s debate, Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National, held a rally in Marseilles (he is standing in the PACA Regional Election) claiming the debate swung in his party’s favour. This announcement was backed up by the polls; the FN has now hit 10% in the region; up four points since October. He promised a “cruel surprise” for Nicolas Sarkozy in March.

In my summer by-election, there was a party known as Nissa Rebelda, which is also known as Nissa Identiaire; which is a good example of fascist “identity politics” though fairly new they did equally well as the FN.

Similarly, in Britain, Nick Griffin was attacked on Question Time for hijacking Churchill’s image by declaring that he would have been a BNP member. He stole an important symbol of National Identity to use for his own political gain, suggesting that he would protect Britain from a perceived threat using Churchill standing up to the Nazis as an ironic metaphor.

The threat has traditionally been on racial and religious grounds, well before nations were founded. Now, as academics (and myself) discuss the nature of globalisation, national identity is attached to immigration and sovereignty despite, or as a consequence of the fact that national borders are becoming more porous and nations more co-dependent.

As sovereignty is increasingly shared and people are increasingly mobile, National Identity as a political construct can no longer exist as a single, rigid image. Identity is a perception. If someone feels that their identity is threatened it is often the case that their identity is at odds with the identity of another.

Though concerns about immigration and citizenship should not be dismissed, it is not acceptable to suggest that, in the name of National Identity; someone is “less” British or has “less” right to be in the country than someone else.

This is the politics of fear; bitterness and aggression. The discussion on National Identity is not framed around who you are; it is about who you are not.