They can look like Michael Jackson’s Moonwalking Dead in his Thriller video, and seem about as relevant. In this burning summer of 2023, when it’s never rained so much and when our trust in politics has never been so low, the old war horses of decades past are plotting their return, convinced that their time has come again
Ségolène Royal, Tony Blair, Frans Timmermans, even King Juan Carlos of Spain are betting that nostalgia for calmer and more certain times will make them look better in comparison to the current crop. Their forerunner may well be Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who has come back to a third premiership with a refreshed reputation of being a moderating force over the small religious parties in his coalition. He is seemingly aiming for Silvio Berlusconi’s political longevity, or even Malaysia’s Comeback Kid, Mahathir Mohamad, who won his country’s PM job for a second time at 95.
Take the publicity-obsessed Socialist Ségolène Royal, a very vivacious and elegant 69, whose first political job was for President François Mitterrand in 1982. Her first Cabinet post came ten years later.
Rather than summering within that stretch of Provence between the Rhône at Avignon and the Alps at Digne (the Riviera is so déclassé), she has been busy travelling, tweeting, signing her latest book, tweeting, attending Left-wing summer conferences, moderating (if the verb can be applied to her) feminist debates, and tweeting. She has also been preparing her debut as a talking head in France’s most controversial (and most popular) talk show, Cyril Hanouna’s Touche Pas À Mon Poste (Don’t mess with my TV). This programme makes the late Jerry Springer sound like the BBC World Service.
Madame Royal is, in other words, on manoeuvres. Trounced by Nicolas Sarkozy back in the 2007 presidential election, she made it all about the supposed refusal of the French to elect a woman president. Yet when Sarko’s successor François Hollande, who happens to be the father of Ségolène’s four children (but had left her for a younger model in 2007), appointed her Minister for the Environment, she ranted at anyone suggesting that this was at least partly due to their three-decades-long relationship.
All the same, Ségolène (like Boris Johnson, everyone calls her by her first name) took her portfolio to heart, scenting a unique opportunity to rebrand herself as an eco-warrior. She introduced eco-taxes on lorry traffic that in 2013 caused the forerunner of the Yellow Vests revolt against her ex-partner. Demonstrations and roadblocks by the “Red Caps” immobilised most of Brittany, where her green charges was first tried out.
Unfazed, Ségolène still sees herself today as France’s Net Zero champion. During her most recent travel to Congo-Brazzaville, she thundered at the “ecological injustice” caused by Western countries to the global South. These, she said on local television, “only produce 3 per cent of greenhouse gases, while suffering 78 per cent of the damage. We are not doing enough and must keep our promises.”
Ségolène Royal’s usual pot-stirring M.O. make Twitter (or X, as we must learn to call it) seem designed for her. Sex discrimination in the workplace, the ECB raising interest rates, energy costs, the reopening of a coal-fired power station, selection at universities, the possible kidnapping of a three-year-old (“Have every cellar, every attic been searched?”), everything is grist to her X feed, endlessly churning to keep her in the news cycle.
When he was first elected, Emmanuel Macron thought it convenient to make her “Ambassador to the Poles”, hoping to, er, freeze her out. This only lasted three years, with the Ambassador spending more time in the Seventh Arrondissement in Paris, giving interviews criticising the President, than in Antarctica or the Svalbard Isles.
Can she make yet another comeback? She has spread her bets: on the one hand, she hopes Macron’s fragile coalition will be in need of Green votes, and give her a shot at a Cabinet job. On the other, she has been courting the Mélenchonistas of the hard Parliamentary Left, supporting them as the “real Left” last year. “She’s the Gérard Depardieu of politics,” one moderate Socialist quipped to Le Parisien newspaper. “She’s had great parts, but right now, she’s a bit all over the place.”
