”Apres moi, le deluge!” – After me, the deluge. So said French king Louis XV, and was he ever right. His successor faced the French Revolution and lost his head.
Much the same can be said of France’s outgoing president, Nicholas Sarkozy. The victory of his Socialist rival Francois Holland in last week’s presidential election not only eclipsed the political career of the widely unloved Sarkozy, it left his clumsily-named political party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), facing its own deluge.
As Europe’s conservatives watch in dismay and even horror, the second big shoe is about to drop in French politics. Far rightist Marine Le Pen appears set to emerge triumphant from the wreckage of Frances defeated center-right.
France holds two-round elections for its lower house, the National Assembly, on 10 and 17 June. Polls show Holland’s Socialists and their leftwing allies winning some 44% of the seats; the center-right UMP 36.5%. The Left already controls the upper house, the Senate.
Control of both houses would allow Holland’s Socialists to implement their vows to impose punitive taxes on the wealthy, hire 60,000 teachers (all Socialist stalwarts, of course), reject the EU austerity pact, boost spending and return the minimum retirement age to 60 from 62.
Meanwhile, the UMP faces questions of life and death. The party was cobbled together from four center-right parties made up of Gaullists, Liberal Gaullists, Liberal Radicals, and Christian Conservatives.
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