France warms to joys of Blairisme
Matthew Campbell , Paris
A NEW trend is emerging among France’s chattering classes. Tired of criticising les rosbifs as backward and bellicose, they are marvelling at Britain’s economic robustness.
Le Blairisme, once a dirty word for French leftists, is gaining respectability as the country’s rejection of the European constitution focuses attention on what President Jacques Chirac has done wrong — and Tony Blair has done right.
Not that Dominique de Villepin, the new prime minister, can be expected to embrace the third way formula that new Labour adopted from America. From one end of the political spectrum to the other, officials have condemned the “Anglo-Saxon model” as a recipe for free market misery and the law of the jungle.
A breed of French Blairistes is emerging, however, to challenge that argument. Chief among them is Jean-Pierre Langellier, the London correspondent of the influential daily Le Monde, the bible of Left Bank intellectuals in Paris.
The gap between the “Anglo-Saxon” and French models was less than French politicians liked to imagine, he wrote last week; and the biggest difference was that “the first has succeeded and the second has failed”.
Langellier is being hailed as the French “herald of the third way” — partly, perhaps, because his reporting on Blair’s economic successes has not been accompanied by the usual derogatory references to “perfidious Albion” and bad food.
Instead, he wrote last week that the Blair government had “rehabilitated the work ethic and encouraged the unemployed to find work through a mixture of legal constraints, tax advantages, family assistance and training”.
What is more, he explained, whereas French leftists had enjoyed using the word Blairisme as an insult, their simplistic, “demonised” vision of Britain was far from the reality of a social and economic practice that produced wealth while trying better to distribute it.
He is not the only Frenchman to espouse such heretical views. Claude Imbert, a commentator for Le Point, a political magazine, has gushed about the vigorous team of realists around Blair.
“They are to French socialists . . . what the Rolling Stones were to Luis Mariano (an old-fashioned operetta singer),” he wrote. They made a different music, were audacious and inhabited a different planet from “all our whiners”.
Unemployment in Britain was half of what it was in France, he noted approvingly. The minimum wage in Britain had gone up by 40% in six years. Public services had been restored; and a majority of European countries were rallying to the British economic model. So why wasn’t France? To some observers the referendum seemed a political earthquake — a signal that the Fifth Republic was limping to a close and that dramatic reforms were needed to keep the country from sinking. Strange as it may seem, however, Chirac and de Villepin responded to the crisis by reaffirming their faith in the failed “French model”.
At the same time they promised a “new impulse” and de Villepin vowed not to ignore foreign ideas in his hunt for solutions to unemployment. Except British ones, of course.
So Anglophobic is the public — and so deeply entrenched is the view of Britain as an unscrupulous slave ship — that the prime minister gives the impression he would rather cut off an arm than import measures from the other side of the Channel.
More importantly, perhaps, Chirac, his mentor, would not approve: he regards Blair as an impertinent upstart.
Instead de Villepin has adopted bits of the so-called “Danish model”, which encourages a flexible labour market while strengthening social welfare. Yet the measures he unveiled in parliament on Wednesday for reducing France’s 10.2% unemployment were almost universally condemned.
Some argued that the package did not go far enough in promoting flexibility in the labour market, and others that they put job security at risk and constituted an assault on the rights of pampered French workers.
It was left to the Blairists to complain that de Villepin was tinkering when what was needed was an overhaul of the whole system.
Nicolas Baverez, author of a book called France in Freefall, argued that the government was continuing to hide the truth: “Unemployment will not go down without . . . the conversion to some form of economic liberalism.” He went on: “Full employment and social progress today are Anglo-Saxon phenomena. Unemployment and social regression are French.”
The outbreak of Blairism has extended beyond the ranks of pundits. Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of Chirac’s centre-right Union for a Popular Movement party, is said to be a Blair admirer. His ambition is to replace Chirac as president and, if successful, might be expected to execute the reforms he says are essential to rescue France.
For their part, the British, says Imbert, should enjoy “their much deserved laurels”. France used to regard Britain as a former Norman colony gone to ruin, he said. Now it is the British who have colonised Normandy with their holiday homes. “Albion, for the time being, inspires more envy than pity.”
thetimesonline.co.uk
Matthew Campbell , Paris
A NEW trend is emerging among France’s chattering classes. Tired of criticising les rosbifs as backward and bellicose, they are marvelling at Britain’s economic robustness.
Le Blairisme, once a dirty word for French leftists, is gaining respectability as the country’s rejection of the European constitution focuses attention on what President Jacques Chirac has done wrong — and Tony Blair has done right.
Not that Dominique de Villepin, the new prime minister, can be expected to embrace the third way formula that new Labour adopted from America. From one end of the political spectrum to the other, officials have condemned the “Anglo-Saxon model” as a recipe for free market misery and the law of the jungle.
A breed of French Blairistes is emerging, however, to challenge that argument. Chief among them is Jean-Pierre Langellier, the London correspondent of the influential daily Le Monde, the bible of Left Bank intellectuals in Paris.
The gap between the “Anglo-Saxon” and French models was less than French politicians liked to imagine, he wrote last week; and the biggest difference was that “the first has succeeded and the second has failed”.
Langellier is being hailed as the French “herald of the third way” — partly, perhaps, because his reporting on Blair’s economic successes has not been accompanied by the usual derogatory references to “perfidious Albion” and bad food.
Instead, he wrote last week that the Blair government had “rehabilitated the work ethic and encouraged the unemployed to find work through a mixture of legal constraints, tax advantages, family assistance and training”.
What is more, he explained, whereas French leftists had enjoyed using the word Blairisme as an insult, their simplistic, “demonised” vision of Britain was far from the reality of a social and economic practice that produced wealth while trying better to distribute it.
He is not the only Frenchman to espouse such heretical views. Claude Imbert, a commentator for Le Point, a political magazine, has gushed about the vigorous team of realists around Blair.
“They are to French socialists . . . what the Rolling Stones were to Luis Mariano (an old-fashioned operetta singer),” he wrote. They made a different music, were audacious and inhabited a different planet from “all our whiners”.
Unemployment in Britain was half of what it was in France, he noted approvingly. The minimum wage in Britain had gone up by 40% in six years. Public services had been restored; and a majority of European countries were rallying to the British economic model. So why wasn’t France? To some observers the referendum seemed a political earthquake — a signal that the Fifth Republic was limping to a close and that dramatic reforms were needed to keep the country from sinking. Strange as it may seem, however, Chirac and de Villepin responded to the crisis by reaffirming their faith in the failed “French model”.
At the same time they promised a “new impulse” and de Villepin vowed not to ignore foreign ideas in his hunt for solutions to unemployment. Except British ones, of course.
So Anglophobic is the public — and so deeply entrenched is the view of Britain as an unscrupulous slave ship — that the prime minister gives the impression he would rather cut off an arm than import measures from the other side of the Channel.
More importantly, perhaps, Chirac, his mentor, would not approve: he regards Blair as an impertinent upstart.
Instead de Villepin has adopted bits of the so-called “Danish model”, which encourages a flexible labour market while strengthening social welfare. Yet the measures he unveiled in parliament on Wednesday for reducing France’s 10.2% unemployment were almost universally condemned.
Some argued that the package did not go far enough in promoting flexibility in the labour market, and others that they put job security at risk and constituted an assault on the rights of pampered French workers.
It was left to the Blairists to complain that de Villepin was tinkering when what was needed was an overhaul of the whole system.
Nicolas Baverez, author of a book called France in Freefall, argued that the government was continuing to hide the truth: “Unemployment will not go down without . . . the conversion to some form of economic liberalism.” He went on: “Full employment and social progress today are Anglo-Saxon phenomena. Unemployment and social regression are French.”
The outbreak of Blairism has extended beyond the ranks of pundits. Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of Chirac’s centre-right Union for a Popular Movement party, is said to be a Blair admirer. His ambition is to replace Chirac as president and, if successful, might be expected to execute the reforms he says are essential to rescue France.
For their part, the British, says Imbert, should enjoy “their much deserved laurels”. France used to regard Britain as a former Norman colony gone to ruin, he said. Now it is the British who have colonised Normandy with their holiday homes. “Albion, for the time being, inspires more envy than pity.”
thetimesonline.co.uk