Jury out on the French government

FRANCE'S new government has raised hopes. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin comes from the smallest of political minorities. His party's Presidential candidate, Alain Madelin, got only 3% of the vote - less than the Communists and the Greens.

From an Anglo-Saxon viewpoint, it seems the more sensible a French candidate's views, the less likely they are to be popular. Madelin's economic views are similar to those of Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush in America, or Baroness Thatcher and Tony Blair in Britain.

At issue is the preference for market or State solutions. Does the State cause the problems which the market can cure, or vice versa? It is the 21st century's version of the 18th century's debate on legitimacy.

'God bless the King, I mean the Faith's Defender; God bless - no harm in blessing - the Pretender; But who Pretender is or who is King, God bless us all - that's quite another thing' (John Byrom).

Re-elected President Jacques Chirac has formerly been a firm supporter of State solutions. But he has now selected a Prime Minister from France's free marketeers and has proclaimed reform as his battle cry.

But things in French politics are, even more than elsewhere, seldom what they seem. Jean-Pierre Raffarin may have been a member of Madelin's party, but he was responsible, in a brief previous period of office, for a very illiberal measure which sought to protect small shops from the growth of hypermarkets.

Furthermore, it seems that style rather than vision was the Prime Minister's great quality. The President is reported to have chosen him 'because he does not shine his shoes'.

The jury is therefore out on whether we can really expect the new French government to be an improvement on the last one, two, three or four. One thing is sure, the improvement prize would not be hard to win.

One person taking an informed, but dark, view is Henri Astier of the BBC. In a recent piece published by The Times Literary Supplement, he observed that, during most of the recent election campaign, Chirac's big idea was 'security'. Fighting crime was just one battle in the wider struggle against 'insecurity in all its forms'.

The role of the State is seen as protecting its citizens against violence and workers against the vagaries of economic life. But if this is really the essence of the new regime we can expect worse, rather than better, economics.

As Astier points out, the less a position is deserved, the harder its beneficiary will fight to preserve it. Even if you are earning a fortune, losing your job is no big deal if you are worth it and get another fortune elsewhere. But the French economy has a vast public sector, where people are massively overpaid and so fight tenaciously to keep their jobs. They constitute a quarter of France's workforce, roughly twice the level found in Germany or Britain. The chances of Raffarin seeing off the French public sector unions look slim.