Non, non, non

There is almost no other term of abuse more offensive in French politics than the word “libéral.

There is almost no other term of abuse more offensive in French politics than the word “libéral”. Except, perhaps, for the term “ultra-libéral”. Not because in France the word is associated with progressive politics, or a woolly sort of bleeding-heart political correctness… The French use it almost exclusively to caricature classical economic liberalism: blind faith in free markets and competition.

Now Bertrand Delanoë, the Socialist mayor of Paris and a potential candidate to lead the Socialist Party, has kicked up a stink with his claim that he is a liberal… in a book he published last week, De L’Audace, astonishing because the Socialists… spend most of their time hurling this form of abuse at the right.

During the campaign ahead of the French referendum in 2005 over the draft European Union constitution… Laurent Fabius, another Socialist grandee, argued that the text was a liberal plot devised to prise open French markets and let in Polish plumbers; the French, apparently wholly convinced, voted No… Now, Mr Delanoë says he is “liberal and Socialist” and proud of it. “I am liberal,” he writes, “because I love liberty”, anchoring his conception of liberalism in the… thinking of French philosophers reaching back to the Enlightenment. No sooner had he made his claim, however, than Ségolène Royal… retorted that “to be liberal and socialist is totally incompatible”. The Socialist Party, not to mention the French media, have been tussling over the word ever since.

Could this mean that the French Socialists are about to drag themselves out of the palaeolithic age, and turn themselves into a modern electable party of the left? Somehow I doubt it. So far at least, this has not been a debate about the right balance between the market and the state… It has rather been a matter of brand-definition ahead of a fierce fight over the Socialist leadership… Mr Delanoë, flush from victory at the mayoral poll in March, looks certain to bid for the top job. Ms Royal has already said she wants it. And even the younger generation is starting to seize the term, in order to sharpen their own brand image.

Excerpted from ‘French, Socialist and Liberal’ in The Economist