ALENCON (France): There is nothing very remarkable about Alencon. It is a small Normandy town in northern France of some 30,000 people, attractive in the way such small towns in this country usually are, with a fine Gothic church, a glorious past as the lace-making capital of Europe, and (naturally) no fewer than three museums to prove it.

In the last general election, in 1997, the town was solidly socialist; the countryside around it solidly conservative. With rather more countryside than town, Alencon returned, by a narrow majority, a member of President Jacques Chirac’s Conservative RPR party as its MP (member of parliament).

Five years later and the seat recently figured on the left’s most winnable list. But now even the most dedicated Socialist admits Alencon is probably a lost cause — for much the same reason that the left looks more and more likely to lose control of the national assembly.

French voters go to the polls for the first round of the parliamentary elections on Sunday (June 9). The second round takes place a week later.

“Jospin’s defeat changed everything,” said Jeanne Gerscher, handing out leaflets for the Socialist party candidate, Joaquim Pueyo, in driving rain. “People come up to me now and say: ‘But who’s your real leader? What’s your programme? Don’t you think you’d be better off in opposition?”’

The Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, bade politics a bitter farewell last month after being knocked out in the first round of presidential elections by the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

After five capable years in government, during which it slashed unemployment, pushed through major welfare reforms and cut the working week to 35 hours, Mr Jospin’s defeat devastated the left. In the run-up to the general election it has found itself leaderless, with its record rejected and its programme spurned.

“I used to think the left stood for social justice; not any more,” said Michel Montvalon, nursing a beer in the Royal bar on the route de Mamers. “They’re just the same clique of self-servings elitists as the rest.” Such bitterness among traditionally leftwing voters isn’t unusual in Alencon. Last September, the Moulinex food mixer company folded. Of the 4,900 jobs in its Normandy factories, 3,250 were lost. In Alencon, only 75 of the 770 fired workers have found new jobs.

Some voted for Mr Le Pen in the presidential elections. Others opted for far-left protest candidates, and will do so again — despite the fact that the scattering of the leftwing vote was the main reason for Mr Jospin’s exit.

France’s Socialist party is trapped between old-style interventionism, which it knows it must reject, and Blairite modernism, which it dares not yet embrace.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.