The spoiler

March 11, 2008

Political analysts here are busy scratching their heads as they try to work out the thinking behind the supposed “strategy” of the so-called Third Man in French politics.

François Bayrou, the leader of the centrist Democratic Movement (Mouvement démocrate or MoDem) party is refusing to give his backing to rival parties’ candidates in the run-offs in local elections next Sunday.

He has declined to call on MoDem voters nationally to throw their weight behind either the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire or UMP) or the Socialist party in towns and cities where his party has already been knocked out of the reckoning.

Instead Bayrou has left it up to local activists to decide on a case-by-case basis, claiming he wants his party to be free to pick and choose as it pleases and maintain its independence from either of the two traditional camps of French politics.

But many think Bayrou is playing a dangerous game and risks marginalising himself and his party even further from mainstream politics.

In last year’s presidential elections, Bayrou garnered an impressive 18 per cent of the vote in the first round – not enough to send him into a run-off against Nicolas Sarkozy. But still sufficient to encourage both Sarkozy and the Socialist party’s Segolene Royal to make overtures to both him and his supporters as they went head to head.

Royal is even rumoured to have gone as far as to offer him the job of prime minister if he had backed her and she had won. And her call last week for an alliance between the Socialists and MoDem ahead of Sunday’s vote would seem to give some credence to those reports.

But then as now, Bayrou refused to play ball, preferring instead to cast himself as the spoiler and retreating sulkily to the sidelines when he could have been the “kingmaker”.

As a result last year he saw his archrival Sarkozy triumph at the polls and then suffered the ignominy of witnessing most of his party’s parliamentarians desert him as they ran into the welcoming embrace of the UMP. Even his election manager and close buddy (until then) Hervé Morin accepted a post in the government as defence minister.

When Bayrou retaliated by creating MoDem from what was left of his base of support, he promised a new way forward, a party of solidarity to embrace all parts of the political spectrum. But his tactics didn’t go down well with the punters and MoDem won just four seats in the 577-strong National Assembly in June.

That all happened almost 10 months ago, and you think the man would have learned his lesson. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case.

He has created a party but is failing to show distinct leadership qualities. His supporters and opponents alike are perplexed and that can never be a very sound political move. And there’s the overriding impression that far from being concerned with changing the face of French politics, Bayrou is playing the same old game of promoting himself and his ego above and beyond what might be the wishes of the electorate.

MoDem has no coherent national policy in coordinating its approach to the second round of the local election. And the chances are that the party itself is unlikely to hold the balance of power in more than a handful of municipalities.

To make matters worse Bayrou himself faces fierce competition in his own personal stronghold in Pau in the southwest of the country and could well find himself failing in his attempt to be mayor of that town.

That would dent his national standing, his ambitions and potentially marginalise him even more than he already is. Perhaps it’s time the man learned a little humility and a whole heap of sense.

Persiflage