French politics. Flight from the centre

The strange similarities between two would-be presidents

AT FIRST glance, Laurent Fabius and Nicolas Sarkozy, two presidential hopefuls for 2007, have little in common. On the left, Mr Fabius is a product of the left-bank intelligentsia and the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, France's civil-service college, who was prime minister in 1984-86. On the right, Mr Sarkozy is no enarque but a lawyer with a terrier-like manner, who has been repeatedly passed over for prime minister. Yet the pair have begun to adopt similar political strategies.

Each has started to seduce the political extremes. Mr Fabius's charm offensive began when he ignored a Socialist Party vote for the European Union constitution last year and led a breakaway camp of rejectionists. His fellow-travellers included Trostkyites, revolutionary and ordinary Communists, and anti-globalisation protesters. He posed with José Bove, an anti-capitalist farmer, denounced a Europe “dictated by finance”, and promised a warmer, friendlier world. Since the French no vote, Mr Fabius has emerged as a credible rival to Francois Hollande, the weakened Socialist leader, who has called a party congress in November. Manoeuvring among rivals is feverish. Mr Fabius's programme will be well to the left of Mr Hollande's: he promises a platform he will be proud to call socialist. “Big tax cuts will clearly not be on the agenda,” said the man who, as finance minister, cut taxes.

Mr Fabius's courtship of the far left is mirrored by Mr Sarkozy's of the far right. Never one to miss a chance to play action man, Mr Sarkozy rushed to a rough housing estate near Paris after a child of north African origin was murdered. He offended liberal sensibilities by vowing to “clean out the place with a dirt-blaster”. Then he said that a judge who had released on parole a man who went on to murder a young woman would have “to pay” for his mistake. Mr Sarkozy calls this the straight-talking of a man of the people, but some have detected an effort to speak to the far right. Its standard-bearer, Jean-Marie Le Pen, won 17% of the vote in the first round of the 2002 presidential election, securing himself a place in the run-off against Jacques Chirac. Mr Sarkozy has duly made security his top issue since he returned in June to the Interior Ministry.

What explains this quest for votes at the two extremes? First, it is a response to France's shifting political landscape. Under the Fifth Republic, mainstream parties have faced opposition first on the far left, then on the far right, but not usually both at once. Today, the far-right National Front remains a force even as the hard left consolidates its place, each picking up popular voters disaffected with the centre. In 2002, 24% of working-class votes went to the National Front and 16% to the hard left.

Second, the French Socialists have never been a mass movement, unlike Britain's Labour Party. As Mr Fabius argues, the party needs broader backing if it is to break out of the 20-25% range. Francois Mitterrand did it by reaching out to the Communists, which ultimately took him to the Elysee in 1981. Mr Fabius makes a similar case now. “If we really think that our own allies are outdated,” he asked last weekend, “if we believe that such-and-such an anti-globalisation movement is an opponent, then who are we going to build an alliance with?”

The third element is electoral tactics. In a two-round system, a candidate needs to lean to the wings in the first round, and return to the centre to get a majority in the second. If not, genuine extremists can split the first-round vote. By sounding an authoritarian note, Mr Sarkozy hopes to rob the National Front of votes. Mr Chirac's mutterings about the “smells and noises” of immigrants when Paris mayor did not hurt his presidential chances. But such a strategy carries certain risks, and not just because it enables moderate rivals to decry distasteful politics.

One risk is that it could leave the centre ground open. Second is a problem of credibility. Will Mr Fabius, who today denounces tax cuts, appeal tomorrow to the middle classes whose tax burden is so heavy? Will Mr Sarkozy's rightward lurch alienate those in the centre whose votes he needs in a second round? In many ways, both men want to show that they embody change: something different compared with tired, out-of-touch politicians. Yet a third risk is that their attempts to do this look like the politics of opportunism, not of conviction.

Feature looks at the perceived similarities between two Presidential hopefuls in France, Laurent Fabius and Nicolas Sarkozy.