The French Left, now united under the NFP label, could soon be called upon to govern, by “applying its entire program, only its program, and respecting the announced timetable”. It might not even be toppled by an immediate motion of censure, because it would have received the implicit blessing of the Rassemblement National, delighted to let its opponents fail, in order to win the next election. In fact, in the present circumstances, and with such a program, the Left can only fail and be swept away by the voters. That would be the end, for a long time to come, of any left-wing perspective in this country.
The writer of these lines has been, and remains, a left-wing voter. Once again, he has voted left, out of loyalty to his values. However, he can only condemn a program whose implementation would remove his political family from power for decades to come.
Let’s remind ourselves of the balance of power: in the last elections, the left represented no more than 30% of the electorate; it elected most of its deputies (who make up less than a third of the National Assembly) thanks to the support of voters from the center and the right, who wanted to keep out the RN without approving the left’s program, and bypassing the intolerable anti-Semitic and communitarian overtones of many left-wing candidates.
Let’s recall the country’s situation: a quadruple deficit (budget, primary budget, trade balance, balance of payments); rating agencies on the lookout; a budget to be presented to Parliament in 70 days’ time.
Against this backdrop, the Left is promising to implement a program improvised in four days.
First of all, the left-wing parties are to be congratulated on their willingness to adopt a program. However, it’s a slapdash program, unprepared throughout the years of opposition, during which the Left has succeeded in presenting only incomplete, unfunded programs, and, because of a lack of agreement between the parties, ignoring many subjects, such as European issues, which largely determine the feasibility of a national program.
Let’s distinguish between what’s in the program (a minimum wage of 1,600 euros, abandonment of pension reform, price freezes, confiscation of all inheritances in excess of 12 million euros, i.e. the eventual nationalization of hundreds of thousands of SMEs) and what’s not (measures for innovation, productivity, competitiveness, reduction of public debt, the fight against rural desertification, sustainable agriculture, a serious plan for health, education, ecology, the fight against discrimination, etc.), productivity, competitiveness, public debt reduction, the fight against rural desertification, sustainable agriculture, a serious plan for health, education, ecology, the fight against discrimination, gender equality, respect for secularism). A program whose financing is not assured, despite some corner-of-the-table calculations; because many expenses are not counted (such as the subsidies that would have to be granted to SMEs to enable them to bear the rise in the SMIC) and many revenues are overestimated (because those announced are largely unconstitutional).
The full implementation of this program (and this program alone) would very quickly lead to a rise in interest rates, and thus in the cost of debt, and thus to an increase in budget spending; and a halt in investment, and thus a slowdown in growth, and thus a drop in budget revenues. This would lead to higher unemployment and a major financial crisis. Moreover, the explicit promise not to respect the European budgetary pact would lead to a very serious crisis with our Union partners.
Naturally, the poorest will pay the price, while the richest will find the means to protect themselves, even if they leave the country.
And yet, people will tell me, this program was prepared by economists and has received the enthusiastic and peremptory support of many others, including a few Nobel Prize winners. How is this possible? Quite simply because economics is not a hard science, unlike physics and chemistry; because economists can always be found to support a theory, whatever it may be; because some of these economists are paid by the taxes they propose to raise, while others devote their fanatical adoration to the market.
This program has nothing to do with the one (made up of structural reforms and irreproachable in the field of racism and anti-Semitism) that the Left implemented in 1981, after 7 years of maturation, in an entirely different political situation, where the Socialist Party had conquered the majority on its own, without needing the support of the Communist deputies, who were, however, loyal allies for a time.
As for today’s program, it deserves the harsh criticism made in 1973 by the great liberal thinker of the time, Raymond Aron, when, in a famous article, he described the first version of the left-wing program (then dominated by the Communist Party) as “a square circle”.
For my part, hoping that the Left will one day return to power and stay there for a long time, I hope that it will be able to find its way into the hearts and minds of those who have left it, that it will be able to get rid of this program, and discard those who support it, at best without having written a line about it, and at worst without even having read it.
j@attali.com
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