Give common sense a chance
This has been an insurmountable obstacle for successive governments over the past twenty years’. How often have we heard this refrain from the mouths of commentators and often politicians too – at least those of the Centre and Right, the Left being less prone to self-criticism?
Does this mean that the policies of Pierre Mauroy and Jacques Chirac, of Pierre Bérégovoy and Édouard Balladur, of Alain Juppé and Lionel Jospin have all been the same and that their governments have found themselves in identical political situations? Certainly not!
Over the twenty-one years since the double transfer of power in 1981, the Left has been in government for fifteen years – three quarters of the entire period. Three times it has had the benefit of a full legislative term of five years, giving it the necessary continuity to apply its ideas. On each occasion, the electorate has delivered a damning verdict on its performance. Socialism, French style, is definitely not good for France.
The RPR-UDF alliance has also been in power three times, but each of its terms of office has lasted for only two years. For two of these three truncated terms, it was in a situation of uncompromising cohabitation with a President, François Mitterrand, who prevented his Prime Ministers, particularly Jacques Chirac, from using executive orders (ordonnances) to fast-track reforms. In spite of this, each of the RPR-UDF governments initiated radical reforms. In each instance, there was insufficient time for their benefits to be appreciated by the general public. The great reformers in other countries, such as Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl or Ronald Reagan, would have been swept out of office if they had been required to face the electorate after two years in power, for two years is enough time to grimace at the bitterness of the medicine but not enough to appreciate its healing properties.
The European Parliament is a good observation post from which to compare the political debates in neighbouring countries. The doctrinaire stances of the French Left distinguish it from all its sister parties, and it even takes pride in that! Only in France do we encounter the idea that any sort of measure designed to help businesses is inherently ‘right-wing’ and, conversely, that any new constraint imposed on those same businesses is intrinsically ‘left-wing’. For years now, under Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, the British and German Socialists, like their Italian, Dutch, Belgian or Spanish counterparts, have taken the view that economic measures are not to be judged in terms of their right-wing or left-wing credentials but on whether or not they work. Similarly, it is only in France that urban insecurity – the problem itself, not particular solutions – is regarded as a preoccupation of the Right, or even of the Far Right, as a matter with which no left-wing government worthy of the name should concern itself.
France needs to embrace reforms that work, as the United States and our European partners have already done. This is not a matter of ideology but of common sense.
Encouraging those who take risks instead of punishing those who succeed in the name of a perverted sense of equality, making public services serve the public once again, helping those whose need is greatest instead of giving handouts to a particular electoral base, dealing with the problems that really concern the people of France, beginning with insecurity, ensuring that decision-makers at the local, national and European levels are clearly identifiable and accountable at the ballot box: this is what has succeeded elsewhere. It is what the French people expect. It is what France needs. Let us confirm the choice we made in the presidential election by giving Jacques Chirac the parliamentary majority we need in order to give France a real curative dose of common sense.
Alain Lamassoure, 5 June 2002