French Politics (Free subscription) | 11/28/2009
Manuel Valls, looking for a constituency to back his candidacy , tried to woo Les Gracques, a group of center-left high civil servants: Entre les Verts, le PS, le MoDem ou Villepin, il y a une compétition pour savoir qui incarne politiquement cette alternative. C'est pour ça que je plaide pour qu'on parte des questions de fond. Interesting to find not only MoDem but even Villepin included...
French Politics (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
Wasn't it Vincent Peillon who was prepared to go to court to block Martine Aubry's victory over Ségolène Royal in the party leadership contest earlier this year? He has cooled considerably on Ségo since then, to the point of denouncing her presence at a meeting he organized as "unwanted." Peillon is attempting to put himself at the center of a broad coalition of Socialists,...
The Croydonian (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Our French chums are chafing at the latest price hikes for cigarettes - base line for a pack of 20 is €5.10, and €5.60 for a packet of Marlboros. If memory serves, the average smoking Briton would think a fiver for a packet of Phillip Morris's finest quite the bargain, and doubtless the tabacs and grand surfaces of Calais and thereabouts prove that. Anyway, estimates from BAT have some 22%...
French Politics (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
So, what to make of a presidential poll that gives François Bayrou 14%, Marine Le Pen 11, Olivier Besancenot 10, and Dominique de Villepin 8? If we read those numbers as expressing some kind of dissatisfaction with the current regime, and add Martine Aubry's 20%, we get the usual conundrum of French presidential politics: the vast majority of voters are unhappy with what they've got, but there's...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 10/21/2009
Flight takes off from Paris as joint immigration crackdown prompts anger in France A British-chartered plane took off from Paris today, returning Afghan migrants to their home country in a joint immigration crackdown which has prompted criticism in France. The plane took off from Charles de Gaulle airport carrying three Afghan men "back to their country of origin", France's immigration minister,...
The Croydonian (Free subscription) | 09/09/2009
Martine 'daughter of Jacques Delors' Aubry won the leadership of the French Socialist party in November last year. Our old friend, the perhaps highly strung Ségolène Royal did not take it very well at the time, and appeared something of a sore loser. At the time I wondered (if not aloud, it would seem) if she would stalk off in a hissy fit and start a Ségo Party, but noted this...
French Politics (Free subscription) | 09/04/2009
Ségolène Royal is as wary of Martine Aubry's Socialist Party as she is needful of its rank-and-file. Her evolving strategy reflects this dual relationship. On the one hand, she has decided that a frontal assault is doomed, so she has resolved to be a good party member. She no longer attacks Aubry, the two share the stage, are photographed together, etc. On the other hand, she wants to...
French Politics (Free subscription) | 09/02/2009
Alain Juppé, who was to have been Sarkozy's Green Czar until he lost his bid for a seat in the Assembly, has come out in favor of the carbon tax proposal , but his embrace of the measure should really be described as oui, mais ... Although he criticizes Ségolène Royal, rightly, for her incoherence on the issue, he more or less echoes her complaints about the inequitable impact...
France24 (Free subscription) | 08/30/2009
In her closing speech at the summer meeting of the French Socialist Party in La Rochelle, leader Martine Aubry detailed her plans to rescue the party from internal strife and pull the country out of economic crisis.
France24 (Free subscription) | 08/30/2009
Martine Aubry’s leadership of France’s Socialist Party has been harshly contested after a trouncing in EU elections, but her popularity is rebounding after she called for US-style “primaries” ahead of France’s next presidential runoff.
French Politics (Free subscription) | 08/29/2009
Martine Aubry wants to say that the PS and the Greens are on the same page when it comes to the environment, but Cécile Duflot, who is in La Rochelle for the PS Summer School, notes that Ségolène Royal has attacked the carbon tax and that the PS has been lukewarm in its support. Moving this flirtation to the next stage may prove to be quite difficult.
Financial Times (Free subscription) | 08/29/2009
Martine Aubry, leader of France's opposition socialists, yesterday set out long-awaited plans to save her beleaguered party from implosion, promising to "renew it from...
Financial Times (Free subscription) | 08/29/2009
Martine Aubry, the socialists' leader, has laid out plans to save her beleaguered party, promising to 'renew it from A to Z' in an attempt to reunite members and bring in new talents
France24 (Free subscription) | 08/27/2009
Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry (pictured) backs US-style primaries to pack the party's presidential candidate. The concept is gathering support, with many seeing it as ideal way to find a candidate beat President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 07/19/2009
One of the biggest names of the French left yesterday turned his back on decades of political loyalty when he declared the Socialist party to be "dead" and called for its rapid dissolution. Bernard-Henri Lévy, France's most media-friendly philosopher and left-leaning intellectual, said the party had been taken over by a "reactionary ideology" that had led ultimately to its...
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