It was impressive to witness the end of the battle for the designation of a party leader and realize that no program was proposed by either he or his rivals. All the same, it is not known what they had in mind for the party they sought to secure the votes for, or the mode of designation of their candidate for the presidential election; let alone the program this candidate would propose for the country.
And since no matter what the parties, the left, the right, the far left or the far right, the void is as great, France finds itself in a situation which is both very dangerous and exciting. Because everything is possible.
This can take a turn for the worse, as Greece might experience with Syriza; or at best, as Spain might experience with Podemos, this party which came out of nowhere but from a group of reasonable and intelligent people and has now soared to the top of opinion polls, when nobody would have dreamed its existence a year ago, not even among its founders.
In France (while expecting for the birth, ex nihilo, of a « Great Public Weal party, » for which I have been calling for, and that would bring together all those in France who still want to believe in this country and unleash its creative potentials without destroying the State which enshrines its very essence), it is important to challenge the existing parties, who do not yet know they are moribund, if not dead, into giving birth to a credible program.
They will need, first and foremost, to take note of their failure in action, if they have governed before. And renounce the demagogic nonsense they feed on, if they have not yet governed.
To develop such a program, the right and the left parties can no longer refer to 19th century concepts. Everything should be reinvented, on the basis of a world undergoing massive changes. They are totally incapable of doing so.
This task is particularly difficult for the UMP party, or whatever its future name might be, because it will be difficult for its new leader, who has already been in that seat in the past, to deny the fact that he left the country in a disastrous situation (for example, the financial crisis only accounted for one-third of public indebtedness that he has provoked during his term of office), and to propose a new program, without being asked why he did not do during his first term of office what he would say he now wants to accomplish during his second term. And his climb-down live on marriage for all does not bode well for his ability to withstand various pressures every President must face.
The campaign that ended for the leadership of the UMP party thus announces an archaic program, mixture of uptight statism and societal anti-modernism, at odds with what a great Liberal party should embody today: A massive reduction of the role of the state in society, through privatization of many public services, or at least their transformation into agencies under private law; a parallel reduction in income taxes for creators; higher taxes on rents, including inheritance; a massive reduction of barriers to the creation of businesses, associations, unions, media, cultural goods and object of all kinds, through a massive incentive to patronage and crowdfunding; an encouragement to all employees, employed or unemployed, to become entrepreneurs; a warm and even proactive welcome to everyone, students, entrepreneurs, researchers and artists who would like to come from the rest of the world to contribute to the task of building the French culture; a global promotion of human rights; an uninhibited linguistic patriotism; a stubborn desire to continue building a political Europe, whose political liberalism would complement the current economic liberalism. Finally, an increased liberation from cultural patterns, including family mores, and those in relation to death.
Of course, all this, the former new leaders of the former new UMP will not dare. And they will disappoint.
j@attali.com