Socialists fear apathy will give Le Pen new chance

The sound system at the Socialist rally belted out the political anthem of the Toulouse rock group Zebda: Nous sommes tous motivés. (We are all motivated). But are they?

Is the French left, and the French electorate as a whole, still motivé going into the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday?

At one of the final campaign rallies in the left-wing bastion of Nantes, a small group of Young Socialists jumped energetically up and down. The remainder of a packed hall of middle-aged, and mostly middle-class, Socialist supporters roared on their new leader, François Hollande.

But several activists confessed later to great anxiety. "The National Front is still there. They're still spreading their poison," said Jean-Luc. "If people think they've voted against [Jean-Marie] Le Pen once and that they don't need to vote again, we could be in for another shock."

He is not worried that the left-wing coalition of Socialists, Communists and Greens might lose its majority in the national assembly in the two rounds of voting over the next two weekends. That now seems almost inevitable.

His fear – and the fear of Mr Hollande and other Socialist leaders – is that the tidal wave of revulsion against the far right, which swept France in May after the first presidential poll, has given way again to indifference and distaste for mainstream politics.

Sunday's first round of voting could see the same low turn-out, and the same scattering of the left-wing vote, that allowed the National Front leader to finish second in the first presidential poll. That could produce scores of three-way contests (between left, centre right and far right) in the second round of the parliamentary election, which might favour the left. But it could also mean dozens of constituencies in which a divided left fails even to qualify for the decisive round of voting on Sunday week.

Whose fault would that be? Mr Hollande, a lawyer by training and a dishevelled technocrat by appearance, gave a tub-thumping, effective speech to the rally in Nantes. He has fought a pugnacious campaign, spraying a dash of red, or at least pink, on to the characterless programme of the defeated, and now retired, former prime minister and presidential candidate, Lionel Jospin.

But Mr Hollande, a Harry-Potterish figure with rimless glasses, a wayward shirt collar and untidy hair, has offered no important new ideas.

This is hardly surprising because the Socialists find themselves doubly cornered. They were punished for their managerialism under Mr Jospin. They know that they cannot go back to interventionist socialism. They are unwilling to take a leap towards a Blairite third way, embracing market and conservative social values.

Beyond that, they have been trapped by their own criticism of five years of left-right "cohabitation" with President Jacques Chirac. How can they now ask the voters to give them another majority in parliament and another five years of shared power?

In the absence of strategy or ideas, there remains personal ambition. Mr Hollande has been constantly undermined by the patronising comments and faint praise of other Socialist leaders, who regard themselves as more qualified to emerge as the most important figure on the French left.

The former prime minister and finance minister, Laurent Fabius, the former finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the Mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, have all hinted that they, not the inexperienced Mr Hollande, have the best claim to be the Prime Minister if the left wins another majority in the parliamentary election.

Since such a majority seems extremely unlikely – and their comments made it less likely – their real intention seems to have been to position themselves for the internal blood-letting that will follow Mr Hollande's defeat.

Several Socialist activists at the Nantes gathering said that many potential supporters, "motivated" in May by the good-versus-evil struggle to block Mr Le Pen, had been sickened by this almost indecent resurgence of politics-as-usual on the left.

Centre-right supporters of President Chirac are also dangerously divided by petty squabbles and personal ambitions. None the less, a comfortable majority in parliament for the President, re-elected by a crushing 82 per cent to 18 per cent margin over Mr Le Pen on 5 May, looks the most likely outcome over the next 10 days.

The French Socialists will then have five years to consider what to do next. Above all, they have to find some way to reconnect with the French working class.

In the first round of the presidential election in April, the single biggest vote-getter among factory workers and the unemployed was Mr Le Pen. The Socialist Mr Jospin came third.