Sarko-Sego

The talk here in France is of the impending presidential election and the two principle contestants – Sarko and Sego - Nicholas Sarkhozy and Segolene Royale. In broad terms Segolene is the socialist candidate who wants to continue and expand the role of the state in improving people’s lives and Nicholas Sarkozy is the economic liberal who wants to free up the French economy from excessive state control. So a classic right/left confrontation. There are other contestants such as Francois Bayrou who lives in the middle (and may just sneak in a la Giscard D’Estang in the 70’s) and Jean Marie Le Pen who sits on the right and is a narrow-minded bigot.

I am currently witnessing some of the problems in the French economic system at first hand. It is alarmingly difficult to do anything vaguely entrepreneurial without the state first of all giving its ‘permission’ through a bureaucratic system that most of the people who work in it do not seem to understand. I believe that the current France crushes the creative spirit - how many great French creatives can you name in the last 50 years compared to the fifty years before that? It has one million less small businesses than the UK and this would be ok if there were jobs for everyone but there are three million unemployed and millions more ‘saisonnieres’ – seasonal workers who are paid not to work for 7 months of the year. I believe that unemployment is the ultimate indignity. It is even more offensive for the French government to make it doubly difficult for those with the drive to push themselves out into the world to do so. The French really do seem like rabbits stuck in the headlights. Too de-sensitised by the pervasiveness of the state to allow words like initiative, creativity and hard work to enter their lives and too nervous of uncertainty to allow themselves to be rid of bureaucratic shackles. The ultimate sign of the state-sponsored crushing of the individual spirit were the recent demonstrations by many young French who wanted ‘fonctionnaire’ type jobs for life just like their parents had. I found it very sad indeed that an age group with its collective life ahead of it should want ‘certainty’ for the next forty years. All that zest squeezed out so young. One can only imagine what they might be like at the age of 40 or 50. Compare the youth of a rapidly growing economy like Spain to the young French and there is a real sense that over the next 30 years European politics may undergo seismic shifts.

The young French are leaving. 300,000 young french now reside and work in the UK (mostly London) which explains why Sarkozy has been vigorously campaigning in London for French votes. His daughter works in banking in London too. Segolene Royale wants to roll out a state sponsored programme that will put 500,000 french to work and to increase taxation to pay for it. To my mind governments in the modern world do not create jobs - they get in the way of those who have the energy and foresight to do it. They can do much to create the environments in which jobs are created by loosening their grip on the individual and on those with entrepreneurial spirit. I feel that the UK’s current economic strength has come from this self-same loosening. We have many social problems in the UK but I do not envy the French ‘social model’ one bit. It crushes human endeavour and that to me is a terrible sin. If I had the vote here, Sarkozy would get it. And I am not right wing.