Word: socialists
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Earlier this year, the BBC unearthed some startling documents in the British National Archives. The papers, which dated back to the Suez crisis in 1956, documented a proposal by Guy Mollet, France's Socialist Prime Minister of the time, to create a union between France and Great Britain. When his British counterpart, the Conservative Anthony Eden, flatly rejected the idea, Mollet suggested that France could instead become a member of the British Commonwealth...
...trailing Socialist candidate S?gol?ne Royal had warned, during the final hours of the Presidential campaign, that voting for "Nicolas Sarkozy is a dangerous choice," warning that a Sarkozy victory would unleash "violence and brutality" in the projects. Those comments left a lot of banlieue residents even more resentful of France's politics. "To hear the Socialist Presidential candidate cite us as this easily ignitable fuse that would inevitably explode if Sarkozy won was deeply offensive," says Salah Amokrane, a leftist member of Toulouse's municipal council who represents the city's project populations. "Pointing to us as the stereotypical hotheads...
...Perhaps, but even many Socialist Party officials concede that no French Presidential victory by one party has ever been followed in short order by a legislative election that hands power to its opposition. Just as troubling for the left are the internal struggles clearly already under way to decide who will lead their campaign in June, with Royal's more centrist positions under attack from the left wing of the party...
...seriously is considering continuing the disastrous seduction of centrists," warned Jean-Luc Mélanchon, a member of the Socialist Party's hard-left flank. "It's clear that to avoid the right sweeping again, the Socialist Party will have to refocus and regroup, and bond with the wider left to win as many seats in parliament as possible," agree Socialist official Henri Weber. "That will be overseen by members of the party's leadership...
...while an oddly pleased-looking Royal accepted defeat by promising voters "what we've started here together, we'll finish together," her place at the head of the campaign in June is already under question. As one senior Socialist official noted mockingly while she spoke, "Someone needs to tell her she cost us a very heavy loss - she looks and sounds as though...