French press review 23 October 2014

France's socialists are not a happy lot. Three of this morning's papers give pride of place to the ruling party, and two of the headlines use the word "crisis". Left-leaning Libération simply says the socialist house is ablaze. So, what's going on?

Well, if you believe right-wing Le Figaro, we are being treated to further proof of socialist inability to govern. Not only are they unable to run the country, whinges Le Figaro, they can't even run their own party.

The economy is a disaster, the socialists have lost three successive, if relatively minor, elections, the president is incapable of imposing his authority and now key figures in his own political family are opposing what they see as a dead-end economic policy. "Intolerable disorder" is how Le Figaro summarises the whole sad mess.

Former Minister Benoît Hamon is the latest heavyweight to start punching the prime ministerial-presidential pair. He joins Filippetti, Batho and Duflot, aided and abetted by the socialist mayor of the northern city of Lille, Martine Aubry, who started the latest round of hostilities last weekend by saying the lads at the helm had eithet lost the map or were reading it upside down.

No fewer than 39 rebel socialists refused to support the government in yesterday's vote on elements of next year's budget.

While all this is going on, laments Le Figaro, the ordinary French voter is being crushed by additional taxes and charges, shaken by one incoherent reform after another, victimised by continual improvisation by an administration which seems to have no idea where it's going. And now we have to stand on the sidelines of a trench war between old-fashioned socialists and modern ones. They are indifferent to the plight of France, says Le Figaro, wondering how long the country will continue to accept such scorn and disorder from the ruling party.

Left-leaning Libération looks at the same intestinal squabbles among socialists, having a field day with expressions of doom and disaster. "Brother against brother," "war," "clan battles," "fire-setters," "menace," "mayhem"... You get the idea.

Sadly, says Libération, there is a serious ideological basis to this dispute, and it needs to be debated. But not publicly, and certainly not according to the rules of street-fighting.

Prime minister Manuel Valls seems to be the only individual emerging from the flames with his credibility intact. He continues to insist on a "pragmatic" left-wing rather than a "socialist" one, especially if socialism is defined in old-fashioned terms, steeped in out-dated marxism and blatant nostalgia. Valls wants socialism to be a synonym for progress.

On the practical front Valls seems to be winning too, since the rebels have, once again, had the courage to abstain, but are not brave enough to vote against the government. That could lead to the dissolution of parliament and the loss of their jobs, meaning that all the noise is without direct political consequences. Which is not the same thing as saying it will have no consequences.

Communist paper L'Humanité gives front page honours to Tunisia, where parliamentary elections are due early next week.

The islamist party Ennahdha is campaigning on the basis of respect for the nation, for democracy, for freedom. Opponents say this respect is a recent addition to the party's rhetoric, and will not last beyond the elections.

In the 2011 elections, Ennahdha called on Tunisians to vote in the name of God and the prophet. This time around, the key words are development, economy and democracy. The problem is that they don't have any serious political platform to support these new values. Many Tunisians fears that the freedoms won in the original revolution against the Ben Ali regime will be lost in this war of words. Tunisians, crucially, need jobs, not political hot air.