This isn't a uniquely French problem – EU nations of various political hues are in trouble because of a fixation on austerity
Today's BBC headline fairly trumpets the news: "French economy returns to recession". Funny how we Brits seem happy if our trans-Manche neighbours are doing a wee bit worse than we are. Especially if you can add that it is the fault of their government for being, well, a bit too left of centre.
True, the French have just entered double-dip recession, while we have just escaped. But in fact, in recent years the French and British economies have performed pretty much similarly in terms of GDP "growth" (or lack of).
The real European news today should, though, focus not so much on France, and certainly not alone, but on the dire state of the eurozone and broader EU economies. And this has no correlation with the formal political orientation of the government (centre-left, centre-right or whatever).
There is now a group of 10 EU states, not including France or the UK, who have experienced an annual fall in GDP for each of the past four quarters. This "Austerity A10 Club" includes the usual southern Europe list of Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and Portugal. But it also includes two central European countries – the Czech Republic and Hungary – and the northern bloc of Belgium, Finland and the Netherlands – the land of Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch finance minister and chair of the Eurogroup finance ministers, fresh from the Cyprus bailout "triumph".
Italy's GDP has now fallen 4.8% in just two years. Its annual GDP is back to the level of the year 2000. Greece has lost a staggering 31% of GDP, compared with its peak in 2008. These are catastrophic declines that have greatly worsened in the past two years.
And even Germany and Poland – which until recently have done reasonably well – each managed last-quarter growth of just 0.1%.
The problem that unites of all of these countries and the UK is not the political colour of the government but the macroeconomic policy that has been followed. It is particularly harsh for the eurozone countries which cannot rely on a central bank to ward off the bond vigilantes, and who are subject to the Bundesbank's destructive (and increasingly self-destructive) policies of focusing on the risk of inflation just as the eurozone slides into deflation.
The deficit and debt/GDP ratio fetishes that unite the UK government, Ukip, the European Central Bank and the European commission are part of the economics of the poorhouse, where co-ordinated austerity is seen as a "solution", even while unemployment reaches mass levels unknown in Europe's modern history. Let's remember why Keynes wrote his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money: in sum, employment must come first, the rest follows.
The problem for social democratic parties across Europe is that – scared in many cases of being viewed as anti-European – they have accepted the iron logic of the Bundesbank's dogma, and are unable to offer an alternative of generating internal European demand.
This means hitting hardest the working class and other not-so-well-off voters in their countries, who turn either inwards on themselves (depression, suicide etc) or to other political forces, mainly rightwing populism.
The only solution for Europe's social democratic parties is to say: no, time to change course. To make alliances with Greens and other new democratic forces. The European economic orthodoxy has to be challenged in unison by the centre-left parties if they are to survive and stand for any positive policies.
The EU from the outset was a balance between the interests of capital (common market) and labour (social protection). While that balance was maintained, most people across Europe were content with the EU, for all its faults. But the Troika (the ECB, the EC and the International Monetary Fund) is destroying that balance, leaving the EU simply as a neoliberal vehicle.
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