François Hollande’s France is a preview of Ed Miliband’s Britain. And it’s terrifying

François Hollande and Ed Miliband could be political blood brothers. Neither has held down a job outside politics for any serious length of time. Both have been political bag carriers, graduating to apparatchiks. Both have tried to compensate for their essential blandness by adopting radical left-wing policies. Both now pose as socialists, and tout genuinely big (if dangerous) ideas about capital, labour and society. The biggest difference between them is that Hollande won an election, and has been able to put his politics into practice.

So we can look to France to see the kind of future which may await Britain if, as the pollsters and bookmakers believe, Miliband is just over a year away from 10 Downing Street. It is frightening. Hollande’s presidency has been an unalloyed disaster; French unemployment is now over 10 per cent; among the young it is 24 per cent. His war on wealth creators has led to a collapse of foreign investment into the country — it has more than halved in the two years since he came into office.