Today Monday I see that Monsieur Hollande has won the French presidential elections by 51-49%. How very French. M. Hollande claims to be a Socialist, though he is an intelligent man, and knows that socialism as such was most necessary in the nineteenth century, but redundant after the two world wars. By then the world had invented a solid middle class, obviating the need for socialism. Politicians calling themselves ‘socialist’ after 1945 were after ‘political appeal’ and ‘social resonance’ and useful ‘soundbite’, though they were middle (or upper) class themselves and had never met a single member of the so-called ‘lower-classes’ in their lives, with the violent exception of the trenches There have been prime examples in France before (Mitterand for one) and in Britain we have had our Clement Attlee (educ. Winchester) Tony Blair, and our Harold Wilson creatures, none in the least interested in the welfare or well-being of the ‘lower classes’, the second a privileged prefect educated at Scotland’s ‘Eton’ (Fettes) and the third an Oxbridge don.
M. Hollande is best known for having a beautiful mistress (nothing wrong with that, he is French after all). A decent ineffectual man, he has never achieved anything but public humiliation. The beautiful mistress with whom he had four illegitimate children was Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist party’s presidential candidate, who informed the world that her partner was ineffectual and indecisive. Another loving colleague has said that Hollande unfortunately lacks backbone.
This is Hollande, whom the French people following Europe’s beloved tradition, have just elected as their President.
By doing so they have removed M. Sarkozy, a loud-mouthed fellow who thought that ordering the instant shooting of a maniac might win him the election. M. Sarkozy is not a Conservative, just as M.Hollande is not a Socialist. But the French people think that M. Hollande is a socialist, and just as night follows day they have voted socialist. It is the same in Spain: when señor Rajoy has put things more or less right, after four years of draconic, rigid but necessary reforms, when Spanish people are able once again to get a job, spend four hours over Sunday lunch in an expensive restaurant, educate their children privately, buy a third home etc. . . they too will vote Socialist again, because it is the right thing to do. Spanish people are socialist right into their bones, because of centuries of dreadful treatment of them by privileged persons who should have known better. Ask any Spaniard or Frenchman or woman to define Socialism. They will reply that they vote socialist because their parents and grandparents said that they should.
The Spanish people, and the French people much more recently, have voted for a political group that has never, in any civilized or uncivilized country, succeeded. That is a recorded historical fact. But it is not Socialism’s fault. The basic tenets and philosophies of real Socialism are excellent and unsurpassed. But no ‘Socialist’ government has ever been socialist. All such governments are and were managed by clever clogs who choose the right icon, in this case The Closed Fist. ‘Socialist’ ministers could not give a tinker’s cuss for the working classes.
Monsieur Hollande has won by 51 to 49 percent. But has France won? Very soon we will see.
