EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Segolene Royal. Show all posts

Segolene+Royal[i-Segolene+Royal]Harriman House, which has just published the English version of Nicolas Sarkozy’s autobiography, is bringing out a biography of his rival Ségolène Royal in March. Naturally, they are interested in many things to do with the lady and have very usefully provided a full translation of her pact with France and the “hundred propositions so that France can rediscover a shared ambition, pride and fraternity”.

In the way politics seems to be done these days (though not, one must admit by Sarkozy) Royal has consulted many people and have come up with a distillation of what they told her.

More than 6000 debates have been organised throughout the country. I have received over the internet 135 000 contributions. I have listened to the employers and the trade unions, I have met with associations, I have consulted experts.

Many of you have wanted to take part in this joint effort. I wanted this work of listening and confrontation of ideas. I wanted citizens to speak again so that I might be their spokeswoman: you no longer accept the composition in private of projects that are forgotten as quickly as they are written. Promises must be kept and they must be credible.

Well, that’s nice. So what are these 100 promises?

Well, to start with, they promise no reforms to a country that is in serious economic difficulties, with high unemployment and is constantly haemorrhaging some of the brightest and the best to other countries.

Massive investment in research and development; Put in place an industrial policy that prepares for the future and reduces the risks of delocalization; Support small and medium-sized businesses through the creation of regional participation funds and by reserving for them a percentage of public contracts; Give priority to business investment by lowering tax where the profit is reinvested and increasing it where it is distributed to shareholders.

In other words, more government control and more interference. The lady shows no signs of understanding how an economy functions but prefers to follow her very French instincts: nobody can possibly do anything unless officials tell them how to do it.

It doesn’t get any better with increase of the minimum wage (that should sort those unemployed in the banlieux out) and pensions. The 35 hour week to be kept on (to be fair, even Sarkozy has not dared to touch that).

Something called housing security for life, which involves building 120,000 “social dwellings”, possibly of the kind that are already pitted round the big cities, a year with rights to buy after 15 years.

What she does not explain is how she is going to pay for all this.

Job security for all is to be provided through expensive schemes, which are unlikely to create jobs. Globalization is to be fought at all costs. Various taxes to be increased and so on and so on. She even commits the cardinal mistake of assuming that she can somehow change the remit of the European Central Bank.

Read the whole thing and start worrying that this woman might become President of France, thus becoming part of our government as well.

COMMENT THREAD

Royal+China[i-Royal+China]One wonders about the French in various ways but, in particular, one wonders about their choice of the first woman who might be President. Where did they find this ditzhead?

There have been some extraordinarily smart and hard-hitting women politicians in the twentieth century. The Israelis still mourn the passing of Golda Meir. Indira Gandhi was tough but, one must admit, a somewhat poor politician with an unfocused view of what was right for her country. But she did not make the sort of gaffes that Ségolène Royal appears to specialize in. I need not mention the woman who is regarded by many as the best British Prime Minister of the century. Even Hillary Clinton, who has refused to meet la Royal, is a serious politician, despite her recent incursion into paste-shaded mommihood.

As Nicolas Sarkozy pulls ahead in the polls both in approval of his policies and of his campaign (though whether visiting Tony Blair will enhance that campaign or not remains to be seen) Ségo runs into one problem after another.

First there was her unfortunate visit to the Middle East where she cheerfully agreed with Ali Ammar, a Lebanese Hezbollah politician that Israel was Nazi state and that American foreign policy was "unlimited madness", explaining afterwards that she did not hear the comments properly.

Then came the fiasco of her partner’s intervention into the tax debate. François Holland is clearly on the left of the Socialist Party or, at least, being its leader, likes to ingratiate himself with that wing.

A week or so ago he floated a plan, possibly to be presented as part of Mme Royal’s manifesto to raise taxes on people earning more than €4,000 a month. Given the state of the French economy and its ever high unemployment, given, also, the number of French with various levels of education, training and qualification who have chosen to vote with their feet (estimates of economically active French residents in the UK hovers around 500,000) hiking up taxes for the middle classes, as it was described immediately, is not a particularly attractive idea.

Mme Royal disassociated herself from this proposition then found herself in hot water because her spokesman, Arnaud Montebourg, made some comment about her greatest handicap being her partner. He was promptly suspended.

In the midst of all this, Sarkozy has been unrolling some, relatively interesting policy ideas, though he has not touched the biggest holy cow of all, the 35 hour working week. According to Thursday’s Wall Street Journal Europe editorial [subscription only]:

Mr Sarkozy says he would cut payroll taxes four percentage points, bringing France closer in line with its European neighbours. Each French household would get an extra €2,000 a year to spend as it wishes, he says, which could go up to €4,900 if his proposals on loosening up restrictions on working hours are adopted. … He also wants to reduce the widely disliked inheritance tax for all but the very rich.

Not precisely the most radical ideas but even our own Not The Conservative Party could take some lessons from that.

What of Mme Royal's proposals or counter-proposals? Ah, she says, in words that we are all too familiar with on this side of the Channel. We have to wait till she unveils her policies, supposedly on February 11. How are these policies being put together? Interactively, it seems, by taking into account and analyzing all the various suggestions posted on her website by the populace or that part of it that can still be bothered to become involved.

Meanwhile the Royal-Holland ménage is under the spotlight about its own income and tax returns, reminding us all rather forcibly of the Theresa Heinz Kerry scandal in the last American presidential election.

Ségo is trying to establish her credentials round the world. The success has been patchy and that is putting it mildly. She has been written off as a player in the Middle East. In Canada she managed to infuriate most politicians by apparently supporting Quebec separatism.

Then came the story of the "Corsica hoax". It seems that a comedian Gérald Dahan, who is close to the Sarkozy camp telephoned Ségo, pretending to be Jean Charest, the Premier of Quebec. Allegedly wishing to discuss the presidential candidate's earlier comments about "Québec Libre" he prodded her for a further pronouncement.

Dahan struck pay dirt, as they say. Mme Royal expressed the view that this is similar to some people's view in France. They would be happy to grant Corsica independence. But, don’t quote me on this, she added.

Telephone hoaxes are not very pleasant and the French campaign is shaping up as being one of the dirtiest on both sides in living memory. Nevertheless, making that comment about the possibility of Corsican independence, a rather touchy subject in France, shows a certain lack of flair.

death_vans_inside[i-death_vans_inside]And so to China. Ségolène Royal was packed off to visit the tourist sights of China (which are many and splendiferous) in order to wipe out the memory of her gaffe in the Middle East. Apart from her sudden propensity to mangle the French language, there was the unfortunate statement about the Chinese judicial system.

Mme Royal, naturally enough, was pressed on the subject of Chinese human rights. Well, yes, she would raise the question of journalists being arrested but really she was not going to the country in order to lecture the government. This she repeated when she was actually in China, being photographed at various extremely impressive sights.

According to Le Figaro, however, she went further than that. We ought not to lecture the Chinese on these matters but look to what we can learn from them, she explained during her press conference.

I met a lawyer who told me that the Chinese courts worked a good deal faster than the French ones. So, you see, instead of lecturing people we must look at matters of comparison.

Given the standard of justice in Chinese courts this throw-away remark caused something of a hullabaloo. In fact, Sarkozy’s camp can give up on those dirty tricks. According to the International Herald Tribune, his lead over Mme Royal is growing.

It seems that even left-wing intellectuals, whom he has been courting assiduously, are throwing their weight behind him, though, again, their influence outside Paris is questionable.

Still, politics has shifted somewhat in France if this can be said:

One of the strongest statements came from the philosopher André Glucksmann, who declared in a commentary in Le Monde this week that the French left had been "stewing in narcissism" rather than taking stands on important moral issues and that the battle of ideas was in fact being conducted on the right. He complained that the left had failed to learn anything from its debacle in the 2002 election, when the Socialist Party's candidate was eliminated in the first round by Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front.

Glucksmann praised Sarkozy for taking account of France's changed demographics by advocating affirmative action and state aid for the construction of mosques. He called Sarkozy "the only candidate today" to have committed himself to humanitarian positions, notably by denouncing the war in Chechnya, in contrast to President Jacques Chirac, who in September awarded a medal to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

As things are going, our politicians may find themselves furiously trying to imitate the French ones. Well not Ségolène Royal. Gaffes like that they can manage on their own.

COMMENT THREAD

johnny-halliday[i-johnny-halliday]Those French Socialists have a way with words. Particularly political terminology. An article in the Times that has come my way via the Freedom and Prosperity blog (well, one can dream) describes the slow but sure move of American firms from EU capitals to Switzerland.

In particular, there is a move from London, the latest one of those voting with their feet is the food producer Kraft, which “has taken a lease on a building in Zurich and will transfer staff from Vienna and from Kraft’s UK headquarters in Kew, southwest London”.

Obviously, it is not the fact that the UK has not joined the single currency that is the problem but the fact that the UK is an important part of the high tax, high regulation European economic disease. (Not to mention such peculiarly London problems as appalling transport.)

Some 200 UK jobs will be affected by the move to Zurich, Kraft said yesterday, suggesting that tax was just one of the factors that drew the company away from London. Other issues, including public transport, lifestyle, quality and the cost of accommodation were equally important.

France is not happy either.

Biogen Idec, a US pharmaceutical company, recently decamped from Paris to Zug, a canton which boasts nil corporate tax. The knife was twisted further when Johnny Hallyday, the French rock star, revealed that he would move his residence to Gstaad because he was “fed up” with French taxes.

Supporters of the French Socialist presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, accused Hallyday of treachery and called for European action against Swiss “tax banditry”. However, President Chirac said that France must reduce its corporate tax rate if it is to remain competitive, calling for a reduction of the rate from 33 per cent to 20 per cent within five years.

Well, one does rather wonder where l’escroc has been all this time. Has he not been the President of that country for a little while? Easy for him to say tax competition now. But, clearly, competition is not a word that comes easily to our Ségo and her supporters. Tax banditry, eh? You can see the woman is set to be a success in France.