Britain could learn from the French elections

Our problem is that the famous revolving doors into and out of power don't turn often enough

After 100 years of Entente Cordiale, due to be celebrated this Thursday, Britain and France are no more like each other than they were in the reign of Edward VII. In particular, the two countries' politics remain very different. You can see this, for example, by analysing the results of the French regional elections.

In French politics, the best way of calculating dissatisfaction with the political process is to add up abstentions and spoilt ballot papers and then take into account votes for extreme parties that have no chance of forming a government or even a regional administration. On this measurement the recent trend has been alarming. Between the presidential elections of 1974 and 2002, the proportion of the electorate thus rejecting the mainstream parties rose from 19 per cent to 51 per cent. As well as a steady fall in actual turnout in elections, votes dispersed more and more, first the far right parties and then the far left began to find increased support.

But is this growing disengagement now coming to a halt? The only comment which President Jacques Chirac allowed himself between the two Sundays of voting was that at least the turnout had marginally improved. While that may not have been much comfort for a president whose party had just suffered a slap in the face, it was nonetheless important. Like the Spanish two weeks earlier, French voters took part in greater numbers than on the last comparable occasion.

While terrorism was not an issue in choosing French regional assemblies, half the voters admitted being influenced by national rather than local issues. Perhaps the Spanish example was enough in itself to show that the vote matters. And is it clutching at straws to note also that, across the Atlantic, Democrat party members were more active in the primary elections to select their candidate for the forthcoming presidential contest?

In the French regional elections, not only was turnout a little higher, but the far left lost ground and the far right stalled. Could this mean that the elections for the European Parliament due in June will also get a bit more attention than usual? In Britain, for instance, might the electorate want to use them to deliver a rebuke to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair?

As a matter of fact, in France, much more so than in Britain, electors regularly rebuke their governments. This happened to Raymond Barre in 1981, Laurent Fabius in 1986, M. Chirac in 1988, Pierre Bérégovoy in 1993, Edouard Balladur in 1995, Alain Juppé in l997 and Lionel Jospin in 2002. The French have gone through seven prime ministers in this period. We have had only three, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Mr Blair.

Our problem is that the famous revolving doors into and out of power don't turn often enough. It still looks as if Mr Blair will win a third term in government next year. Which would mean that 18 years of Conservative Government would have been followed by at least 12 years of Labour. The problem is the reverse in France - rapid changes of government with the result that no long-term programmes of reform can be carried through.

This time, French opinion polls again showed that voters in the regional elections had a strong desire to use them to punish their Prime Minister. It has made no difference that M. Raffarin claims to incarnate the ordinary Frenchman and that he has distinguished himself from the usual overeducated, Paris-based politician. Like his predecessors, he is earning his full measure of disapproval.

A third difference with British politics is that in France the far right parties continue to garner about about one sixth of the votes. Part of the explanation for this can be found in the analysis by Martine Le Pen, who is seen as a successor to her father as leader of the Front National. She says that over the past 30 years, the French political class has been shifting to the left and that in many countries M. Chirac would not qualify as a right-wing politician.

But there is more to it than that. For the Front National attracts the very workers who used to support the French communist party. They switched partly because the Communist Party became discredited after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They also changed allegiance because the old French Communist Party was designed for the post-war years of relatively full employment. But when globalisation and recession broke up this long established pattern, the French Communist Party was slow to adapt. In particular, it has been ineffective in representing the unemployed. And at the same time, the Front National has been able to widen its appeal to shop keepers and bosses of small businesses, all of whom feel threatened by cheap imports and aggressive supermarkets.

British political parties could draw some obvious lessons from all this. But perhaps most of all, British politicians should share the conclusion drawn by their French counterparts from their very different circumstances - the keys to electoral success are humility and proximity. And come to think of it, Tony Blair would benefit from such advice.