The middle class vote could swing the 2012 presidential election, writes RUADHÁN MAC CORMAICin Paris
IN NOVEMBER 1994, while he was weighing up the possibility of standing as the Socialist Party’s candidate for the French presidency, the then head of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, made a passing remark about French society. He was alarmed, he told Le Monde, by the idea of a France where “two-thirds would live more or less well, but without taking care of those it leaves by the side of the road: the final third, where you find the excluded, the marginalised, those without hope”.
Most mainstream French politicians would surely share the sentiment today, but they would be careful to phrase it differently. With a scramble under way between France’s two main political blocs – President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP and the Socialist Party led by Martine Aubry (Delors’s daughter, as it happens) – to lay claim to the prized middle class votes that could swing the 2012 presidential election, now is not the time to be telling the majority of French voters that they’re doing fairly well for themselves.
How to hone policies to speak to the concerns of a middle class that feels shaken by the economic crisis has become a preoccupation for France’s main parties. Sarkozy’s UMP has set up a working group, under junior labour minister Laurent Wauquiez, to come up with “innovative initiatives” aimed at les classes moyennes – the “poor relation” of French political thinking, Wauquiez believes. Whether they are ideas on internships, jobseeking or childcare, the objective is to stock a “toolbox for the presidential election of 2012”, he told Le Figaro.
The ruling party’s heavy defeat in regional elections last March – and its desertion by many of those voters who were key to Sarkozy’s victory in 2007 – has given new impetus and urgency to the UMP’s task.
According to a TNS Sofres poll conducted during the first round in March, 41 per cent of upper and 46 per cent of mid-level professionals expressed “disapproval” of Sarkozy’s government, while seven out of 10 people in the same categories wanted to see a change in its direction. Compare this to the 2007 election, when an Ipsos poll showed 52 per cent of professionals and 82 per cent of shop-owners voted for Sarkozy.
Of course, middle class is an ambiguous term that describes a hugely varied chunk of the French population.
Neither is the idea of a middle class en crise a new one: in 2006, the sociologist Louis Chauvel published a book called The Middle Class Adrift, arguing that the French middle class was haunted by a sense of impending doom.
But today, the economic crisis has made worries about purchasing power, unemployment, property and retirement all the more acute. For politicians, the challenge is to speak directly to “the France that wakes up early” but feels that government policies are focused on helping others, said Jérôme Fourquet of Ifop.
Buoyed by her party’s recent success, Socialist leader Martine Aubry recently unveiled a major policy platform framed around the idea of a “care society”.
A concept developed by the US feminist movement in the 1960s as a moral theory based around reciprocity and looking out for others in society, the “care ethic” was widened in the writings of some Blairite third-way thinkers in Britain in the 1990s.
Aubry stresses fairness and social interdependence, and recently spoke of “another model of economic development, social and durable, but also another relationship between individuals”. Critics say the idea is too vague. Others credit Aubry with an astute attempt to reach out to those middle class voters who feel newly vulnerable.
What seems certain is that both the UMP and the Socialists believe the 2012 presidential campaign will be won on very different terrain to the last one.
In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy prevailed by promising la rupture, but public unease with his reforms has become so pronounced that he has shelved some of the most contentious ones.
According to government deputies quoted in French media this week, Sarkozy has said he will adopt a different strategy if he stands again.
“After five years of reforms, the French will long for a president who protects,” he reportedly said. Or, as Martine Aubry puts it, a president who cares.