Nicolas Sarkozy has been elected the new President of France. It's a great pity Segolene Royal couldn't make it as she easily had the better policies of the two, but let's look on the bright side. There are three positive things to be said about Sarkozy:
1. He is not opposed to protectionism.
2. He hates hedge funds and what he calls 'speculative capitalism'.
3. He doesn't want Turkey in the E.U.(as many neo-cons do).
Sarkozy apparently sees himself as the new Charles de Gaulle. If so, let's hope he follows the great man's dirigiste economic policies, as well as his foreign policies.
UPDATE: I must also add that when it comes to having an energising, wide-ranging democratic debate, France, has, over these past few weeks, put Britain to shame. The Royal v Sarkozy clash captured the imagination of the French public, as the high turnout evidences. Britain might claim to be one of the oldest democracies in the world, but thanks to the Henry Jacksonite/neo-liberal hijacking of the upper echelons of both our major parties, it's now also one of the dullest.
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Sarkozy has been carictatured by the French left as a right-wing bogeyman and by British Thatcherites as a radical economic reformer of their own ilk but the reality is that if he was in British politics his views on the economy would be well to the left of New Labour.
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