Michel Rocard in 2012.WIkicommons/ Rama. Some rights reserved.An icon of French social democracy, flag
bearer of the “second left”, strong partisan of the “parler vrai” (speaking the
truth) – so rare in today's politics where spin doctors are running the show –
Michel Rocard passed away on Saturday July 2. He was 85.
Rocard was perhaps the last French, and
European, politician who clung to his ideals and moral values in these days of
triangulation and so-called efficiency, even at the expense of his own
political career.
Deeply and sincerely reformist with a strong
social urge, perhaps too far ahead for his time, he was as different as
possible from former Labour PM Tony Blair and ex-German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder, who both skilfully converted their political experiences into the
art of making money. Or from François Mitterrand's Florentine pragmatism, who
was his political nemesis.
Elected President twice, Mitterrand crushed
Rocard's ambitions, using him as his Prime Minister between 1988 and 1991
before dumping him brutally, thus ending his political career. But not his
intellectual and moral image, and the few important reforms he managed to pass,
which have made of him one of a handful of respected statesmen and political
thinkers of recent decades. Yet no one knows if he would have been as
successful and popular had he remained in power for a longer period of time. Yet no one knows if he would have been as successful and
popular had he remained in power for a longer period of time.
His demise comes at a time when the European
social democratic model he so much believed in as the tool to modernise France
as well as politics, is in deep crisis. It is almost everywhere out of power
after having been dominant for years, and appears less and less able to retain,
or regain it. Lack of vision, lack of leadership, lack of empathy with real
people and too much party infighting with petty ambitions, so blatantly out of
touch with the hard realities of today's European peoples' life experience.
Torn between a conservative opposition –
who, for tactical reasons, refuse to support some of his reforms, even if they
agree with them, and the left of his own Socialist Party, whose aim is to
destroy the so-called rightist “traitor” at the expense of their own party,
even if it means risking oblivion after next year's general and presidential
elections – French President François Hollande will most likely be ousted from
the Elysée Palace in May 2017. Long fighting neck and neck with the Christian
Democrats, the German SPD, also threatened on its left by Die Linke, is now so
far behind in seats in the Bundestag that it has little chance to come back to
power in the foreseeable future.
Long a social democratic paradise,
Scandinavia has now turned to the right, and sometimes even the populist
extreme right. Outgunned by a corrupt and authoritarian Popular Party, unable
to benefit from Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's unpopularity, Spanish socialists
of the PSOE have seen voters leaving in droves even if the populist Podemos,
long influenced by Venezuelan “Chavism”, was not able to catch up with them in
last June's elections. In Austria, the two main partners since WWII, the Red
and the Black, Socialists and Conservatives, have been expelled from the second
round of presidential election by a green and an extreme right candidate; a
rerun between the two is due next Autumn.
In most cases the left, long united in her
goal to achieve power, is now hopelessly divided, weakened by the surge of new
populist, nationalist or extreme right parties and, at least in France,
threatened by self-destruction and oblivion. How
painful must it have been …for a man like Rocard, who always stuck to his
moderate line, pragmatic, open to discussion with other people's ideas.
The Big Tent social democratic model which
united for decades all facets of the Left, open to new ideas and experiments,
has given way to a fight to the finish between ideologues and pragmatists, both
further and further away from the “People” they are supposed to represent.
And now, in France, far leftist groups are
resorting to violence, breaking up shops and attacking police during anti-government
demonstrations and even ransacking and shooting at local socialist surgeries.
Even more threatening for democracy, some groups are taking the law in their
own hands, as in the bitter controversy on the future airport near Nantes. When
the government organised a local referendum they say they would only accept a
“No” vote, even after the “Yes” prevailed.
Not to talk about British Labour who threw
itself into the arms of an old leftie, Jeremy Corbyn, a Michael Foot or a Tony
Benn without charisma, in order to exorcise Ed Milliband's inability to win
elections as well as the dark memories of the Blair era.
Now it is torn by an internecine war between
its moderate wing and most MPs, and far left corbinistas. Like many other
leftists throughout the continent, they prefer their enemies' victory to that
of their rival comrades, more comfortable in vocal ideological opposition than
with the hard realities of government.
Worse, the ambiguities of Corbyn's
anti-Brexit campaign has led more than one quarter of Labour voters to cast a
“Yes” vote. Just like in France with the National Front, or Germany with the AfD,
disenfranchised voters long faithful to traditional left wing parties have been
massively shifting to the extremes. Will this be a one off or the beginning of
a new trend from disgruntled voters eager for new faces even if they are selling
worn out, or even unsavoury ideas? It is still too early to say, but the threat
is definitely there.
How painful must it have been to witness
this demise for a man like Rocard, who always stuck to his moderate line,
pragmatic, open to discussion with other people's ideas; ahead of his times
when he fought against colonialism and the Algerian War; or when he fought for
social democracy at a time Mitterrand was clinging to Marxist slogans and
nationalization, before being caught by the hard realities of the world
economy; as well as for ecology at a time when it was hardly popular anywhere.
And who never shied away from criticising the French left as “the most backward
in the world”, including his own fellows Socialists, starting with Hollande.
How painful too for this staunch European and former MEP to see the crisis
which is engulfing the European Union. The blame for which he put squarely in
front of Great Britain.
Even before Brexit, he was in favour of the
UK leaving the EU. In an interview given last year and quoted in the daily, Libération,
he bluntly said: “If the Brits were to leave the EU I would say Hurrah!(…)
Great Britain is a very big country which has always refused that Europe meddle
with her own business. She has blocked any deepening of European integration(…)
She never knew what she was doing in Europe. The English never Europeanised.
Their departure is the necessary condition for a deepening of the EU”.
Which did not stop him for criticising the
way Europe has been run from Brussels as well as from the other 27 capitals,
Paris included. Always, his “parler vrai”!