UDI leader Jean-Christophe Lagarde proves French politics is still a family affair

Some establishment French politicians just don’t get it do they?

With the new president, Emmanuel Macron freshly installed in the Elysée palace and his party,  La republique en marche promising a new kind of politics as it aims for a presidential majority in the upcoming French legislative elections, “morality” is pretty much top of the agenda.

So with that in mind, what does a leading figure from one of the country’s other parties do?

Here’s a clue. He (the name will be provided in a moment proves that the time-honoured tradition of political nepotism is alive and kicking and will undoubtedly  be a hard nut to crack (heavy on the clichés here) as it’s so ingrained with the political establishment.

No the talk isn’t of the Le Pen dynasty from the far right Front National - they’re well beyond redemption.

Nor is it of the Fillons, François and Penelope (and children), who successfully contrived to lose the rightwing Les Républicains a spot in the second round of the presidential elections with their seemingly never-ending stories of overpaid and underworked “family employment” (inverted commas because the case is now before the courts).

This time around it involves the leader of the centre-right Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI) Jean-Christophe Lagarde.

Jean-Christophe Lagarde (screenshot BFM TV)

The 49-year-old is running again in June’s parliamentary elections and, as new rules kick in preventing politicians from simultaneously holding office at different levels (one of those other more-than-warped traditions of French political life), Lagarde has quite “magnanimously” offered to step down as mayor of Drancy (a town in the northeastern suburbs of Paris) and hand over power to the sixth in line among his deputies.

Yes, you read correctly, the sixth in line.

An odd choice?

Apparently not, Lagarde assured the popular daily, “Le Parisien”. The recommendation came collectively from his deputies as the “first in line didn’t want to succeed him” and numbers two to five “didn’t have the time”.

So “number six” it is then, Lagarde’s former parliamentary assistant (until 2014) and current regional councillor, Aude…Lagarde…wife of!

(Not) Understanding French politics - the Macron reform

Quite an ambitious headline, but don't worry, this isn't about to become a pedagogical piece on the finer details of the French political system.

Neither is it going to be a dumbed-down version pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Rather it's a simple but hopefully informative observation as to how difficult it is, even for those who enthusiastically (try to) follow French politics let alone others who only dip into it from time to time, to get to grips completely with the machinations of the system.

Certainly France isn't alone in having its own political peculiarities, but that doesn't mean it's any easier to understand them when they are on full display.

Friday's edition of the excellent lunchtime news magazine "La Nouvelle Édition" on Canal + contains a short segement, presented by journalist Gaël Legras, called "Vu de l'extérieur".

Legras takes a whistlestop tour of other countries' news outlets to discover how they're covering particular stories about France; in other words "what they're saying about us".

Last Friday's chosen subjects were the trial in Lille featuring Dominique Strauss-Kahn who (don't groan) had denied charges of pimping. Paris Saint-Germain's match against Chelsea in the Champions League, anti-semiticism in France following the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in the town of Sarre-Union in the east of the country and the racial slur made by a former foreign minister, Roland Dumas during an interview on BFM TV  and the so-called article 49-3 of the French constitution.

Vu de l'extérieur du 20/02 - Vu de l'extérieur du 20/02

Now, that last subject might not seem particularly interesting, but its application last week illustrated perfectly just how idiosyncratic the French political system can be.

It's a tool which can be used by a government to force a bill through the national assembly without a vote being taken.

It's rarely used because, apart from being perceived as out of step with the democratic process, it is invariably followed by the opposition tabling a motion of no confidence in the government.

But that's exactly what happened last week to economic minister Emmanuel Macron's bill "designed to remove obstacles to French economic progress".

Emmanuel Macron (screenshot from interview with Jean-Jacques Bourdin, BFM TV November 2014)

The bill includes a raft of reforms such as extending Sunday shopping, opening up heavily-regulated professions to greater competition, privatising certain regional airports, ending the monopoly of intercity bus routes...and, and, and.

You can read more about Macron and the reform package in this piece by Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in The Financial Times.

In short though, the reforms came under fire from a number of Socialist party parliamentarians, rebels known as Les Frondeurs, who said they would not vote through the package.

At the same time, two opposition parties, the centre-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (Union for a popular movement, UMP) and the centrist Union des démocrates et indépendants, (Union of Democrats and Independents, UDI) declared they wouldn't be voting in favour either...even though Macron's bill was largely inspired by ideas previously advocated by both parties.

It makes complete sense - doesn't it? Well, at least politically.

Understanding that this was all going to end up very messily for a reform which was supposed to be one of the most important of the second half of his term in office, the French president, François Hollande, gave his prime minister, Manuel Valls, the green light to invoke that (in)famous 49-3 article.

The outcome - UMP and UDI tabled a motion of no confidence forcing Les Frondeurs to rally behind the government because apparently "voting against a bill (introduced by their own party) was one thing, but backing a vote of no confidence submitted by the opposition was not the same."

Not easy for the world's media to understand what the heck was really happening - and just as impossible for those in France as it seemed the political world had turned upside down.

In essence though it was a defeat all round.

The bill still has to make its way through the Senate and then back (in a revised form) to the national assembly.

The opposition has shown itself unable to stick to any sort of political principles (an oxymoron?), and the Socialist party is as divided as ever.

And...oh yes...there are local elections (départemental this time around) in March when guess whose party is predicted to lead after the first round of voting.

Yep, Marine Le Pen's far-right Front National no doubt benefitting from the disillusion many in France have with the traditional political parties.

And last week's parliamentary palaver will only have helped her cause.

But that's quite another story.

Don't worry if you've understood nothing or very little of all of the above.

You're far from being alone.

It's all...well, very French politics - n'est-ce pas?

And if the French were to vote in parliamentary elections today...?

Warning - this piece contains so many numbers, it could serious "do your head in"

A polls has been published in France today which, in and of itself, means very little because it's based on a false premise.

But (and you knew there would be one) it's enough to give the current government, the Socialist party (PS) and in fact the whole of the political Left, the heebie-jeebies.

If (conditional) there were a parliamentary election in France today (and the next one isn't due until June 2017) the Left, and in particular the PS, would suffer a humiliating (to say the least) defeat.

All right, so the poll appears in Le Figaro, a national daily not exactly known for it's love of the PS and whose chairman happens to be Serge Dassault, a member of the opposition centre-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (Union for a popular movement, UMP) and a member of the Senate since 2004.

And was it was carried out by l'Institut CSA (conseil, sondage et analyse) part of the Bolloré group whose president and Chief executive officer, Vincent Bolloré, just happens to be a friend of the newly-elected leader the UMP - Nicolas Sarkozy.

But don't start reading too much into those "facts". They're just an aside as, after all, a poll is just a poll - isn't it?

It has to be both objective and representative.

So what does the Le Figaro's poll "indicate" - bearing in mind that the imaginary election is not going to happen today.

Well...

Using the current two-round majority system, the centre-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (Union for a popular movement, UMP) and the centrist Union des démocrates et indépendants (Union of democrats and independents, UDI) would win between 485 and 505 of the 577 seats in the national assembly.

"A level never obtained by the centre-right" points out Le Figaro which published the poll. "Better even than the 1993 parliamentary election results (when the two centre-right/centrist parties of the time, the Rassemblement pour la République and the Union pour la démocratie française, won 257 and 215 seats respectively)."

The far-right Front National, FN (currently with just two members of parliament) would see it numbers increase to anything from 14 to 24 seats.

And the Left - including the Socialist party, the Greens and the Front de Gauche?

Well they would have to be satisfied with between 56 and 66 seats.

The make up of the national assembly if an election were held today (screenshot "La Nouvelle Édition" - Canal +)

And the "debacle" for the PS would hardly be avoided (although it would be less humiliating) if a system of proportional representation were used.

UMP and UDI - between 208 and 248 seats.
The Left - (PS, Greens and Front de Gauche) - between 180 and 220 (hardly respectable...but)
FN - between 138 and 159 seats.

Draw your own conclusions as to how to interpret the figures and even the value of the (yet another) poll.

But a clearer picture will emerge next year as...guess what.

There will be elections...departmental on March 22 and 29 and regional...at some later date once the territorial reform (the proposal to reduce of the number of regions from 22 to 13 in metropolitan France) has finally been signed, sealed and delivered.

French politician claims his Hitler comments on Travellers were "distorted" - do you believe him?

There's always more than one way to interpret events even if sometimes the so-called "proof" of what happened indicates otherwise.

The comments by Gilles Bourdouleix, the mayor (or deputy mayor as far as the Daily Mail is concerned) of Cholet (the town in western France rather than the Womble) and member of the National Assembly for the centre-right Union des démocrates et indépendants (Union of Democrats and Independents, UDI), over the weekend when he seemed to suggest that "Hitler had not killed enough of them" in a reference to gypsies, while visiting an illegal camp for Travellers, have been picked up by both the domestic and international media.

Gilles Bourdouleix (screenshot i>Télé interview)

There have been calls for him to be sacked and the interior minister, Manuel Valls, has asked prosecutors to take legal action against Bourdouleix for implicitly endorsing crimes against humanity, saying that, "Nothing can justify, nor excuse an elected representative...making such a reference to the worst barbarism of the 20th century,"

Not only did the journalist Fabien Leduc, write a piece including the politician's comments in the regional daily Le Courrier de l'Ouest, he also provided a recording.

Here it is, in all its glory so-to-speak.



Not easy to defend yourself in the face of such evidence.

But that hasn't stopped Bourdouleix from trying.

While he's not denying he made the comments, Bourdouleix is questioning the journalist's integrity (well they're not always angels are they?) and that of the newspaper which apparently has an "axe to grind" and insists the recording isn't quite what it seems.

He says the context in which he had to face 30 or 40 people giving him the "Nazi salute" needs to be taken into account and what was an off-the-cuff remark murmured to himself had been "misinterpreted and skewed" to fit the story.

That's paraphrasing what he said during an interview with the all-news channel i>Télé.

Bourdouleix's ducking and diving is all well and good except perhaps for his track record of how he has dealt with illegal camps and Travellers over the years.

In 2011 the Human Rights League of France  lodged a complaint against him (later dropped) for comments on Travellers when he said, "We're scared of these people. They have all the rights! I'm willing to take a truck full of shit to dump in the middle of their caravans!"

And last year the same organisation filed another complaint against him against him for "inciting hatred or violence and racial discrimination against travellers."

Anyway, here's Bourdouleix defending himself in that interview with i>Télé.

Take a listen and make up your own mind.

Gilles Bourdouleix évoque une "manipulation" - 23/07/13 à 7h00