John Prescott made an extremely appropriate, intelligent and articulate comment recently. Whether he knew it or not.* John Hutton, a former Labour minister who has been appointed as “chair of a new public sector pension commission” joining Labour MP Frank Field’s appointment as a “Povery Tzar”. Prescott called them both “Collaborators.” A piece on LabourList [...]
To my surprise, Ségolène Royal has, at least on the surface “put personal ambition aside to enable a united left.” She claimed that she would not decide to stand alone, but would instead consult with the other main leaders of the Parti Socialiste in France, namely the Chief Secretary (leader) Martine Aubry and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, [...]
A massive victory for the Parti Socialiste tonight, winning 21/22 regions in France. Sarkozy has finally made his mark on French history, it was thanks to him the Left won its highest score since the formation of the fifth republic (1958). Isn’t it beautiful? In PACA, I’m delighted to say we won our corner. Results [...]
Here are theresults for the First Round of the Regional Elections; Parti Socialiste: 29.5% UMP: 27% Europe Ecologie: 12.5% Front National: 11.7% Front de Gauche: 6.2% Modem: 4% Extreme Gauche: 3.7% Participation: VERY LOW around 46.5% Conclusions: This is the worst score the UMP has ever had. Sarkozy was nowhere to be seen the entire [...]
Tomorrow I return to France to help the Parti Socialiste in the Regional Elections on Sundays the 14th and the 22nd. I’ve written previously about the corner I’ll be fighting in Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur here and here, and more recently about the polls predicting a socialist victory here. The lead is not restricted to PACA though, [...]
As I sort my life out in Spain and get back into regular blogging, I’m pleased to offer this bit of continuity. On the 14th and 21st of March, elections for the Conseils Regionals all over France will take place. These will be a decisive test for French politics because, as it stands, the Parti [...]
French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand was fighting to keep his job last night, having been ensnared by a scandal of his own making. The row began with his defence of famous film director Roman Polanski, (arrested with charges of paedophilia) where he said that the affair was “absolutely horrifying” before launching an attack on the [...]
On Saturday I was in the town of Montpellier for a conference of Desirs D’avenir, which on the surface might appear to be a sort of think-tank like Progress or Compass, but is really code for “Supporters of Ségolène Royal”. The Parti Socialiste is not doing particularly well in Paris, mainly (though not exclusively) due to [...]
PACA is one of the 23 regions of France, it stands for Provence-Alpes-Cote D’Azur. The capital is Marseilles, which holds the regional assembly where most of the elected Regional Councillors work. I visited there once when they had some sort of big session going on ; it’s rather like any other hemicycle based parliament, and [...]
Vincent Peillon, Socialist MEP for the South-East (my neck of the woods) is in the process of gathering a coalition of the Left to present a united front. As a young politician, it’s likely that he is setting himself up as a credible candidate for the Presidency. Though he has ruled out running in 2012, [...]
