The French Greens definitely merit a mention, given their incompetence and their remarkable ability to screw everything up.
Tbf it's not like they are particularly bad in the context of 'French political parties'.
Of course, but I do think they're still incompetent despite the poor competition. They've successfully thrown away their few chances at achieving a lasting breakthrough, for one.
Could you elaborate?
I think that the Greens have had 3 chances at achieving a lasting breakthrough, by which I mean potentially becoming a strong green party similar to those in Belgium, Germany/Austria or Sweden. Obviously, it's arguable whether these could really have turned into lasting breakthroughs.
1992-1993: Surfing on the rotten PS being as unpopular as the plague and the RPR-UDF's troubles in oppositions after the 1988 defeat, the Greens - at that point an independent force, albeit one divided between two equally strong parties (Les Verts and Génération écologie) - won 14% in the 1992 regional elections. In 1993, they won a strong but (for the time) disappointing 11% amongst themselves but because of the electoral system and the lack of alliances, they won no seats. A different electoral system here would have really changed the face of French politics, so it's not entirely the greens' fault, but at the same time their 1993 underperformance owes to the greens' time-honoured tradition of getting bogged down in mindless internal squabbles and creating splinter parties, and also the greens' other time-honoured tradition, being horrible at messaging. I don't recall the details of 1993, but there were many dissident green candidacies in France which dragged them down and the official green message was terrible messaging (à la 'we're all gonna die of pollution if you don't vote for us'). After the 1993 'failure', Les Verts under Dominique Voynet (who is honestly one of the most incompetent politicians ever) moved left into the alliance with the PS, which led to them winning seats and cabinet portfolios after 1997. Since then, Les Verts/EELV have been far more preoccupied with coming out with ways of keeping their cabinet benefits than of actually caring about the little birdies.
1999-2002: Despite problems, the Greens still achieved strong results in the 1999 EP elections and in the 2002 presidential election (over 5%), but they totally failed to follow up on those results. 1999 owed a lot to Cohn-Bendit leading the Greens' list - he's always been one of their few/only politicians who isn't an idiot and doesn't care about cabinet participation above all else - and 2002 was just some messed up thing (and, while being a bit of a nut, Mamère isn't an idiot like Voynet, so there's that). But they failed to take advantage of any of these electoral successes, and they were crushed in June 2002 (mostly because of the electoral system and the vague bleue) and failed to grasp the underlying reasons for their defeats (the joined at the hip with the PS image since 1997), instead preferring to continue doing as they did before (sometimes pretending to be 'different') and continuing their transformation into a bureaucratic party of useless hacks out of touch with their base. And then 2007 came and Voynet's presidential campaign was disaster.
2009: the real chance for a lasting breakthrough, originally had all the ingredients for success: building a platform genuinely different from the stale old bureaucratic Les Verts, genuinely expanding to civil society by recruiting interesting and intelligent new non-politician/non-Les Verts personalities to the campaign (José Bové, people from Greenpeace or ATTAC or Hulot's friends), promoting new and old faces (Cohn-Bendit and others like Éva Joly) different from boring bureaucratic politicos (Cécile Duflot or the old guard of Les Verts) and the PS being horrible as usual. 2009 was a real success, obviously, and they really tried to build on that in good faith by transforming the old party into EE/EELV, and despite natural drop-off, 2010 and 2011 were still good elections for them even if circumstances were less ideal. But it quickly became clear that the old vicious cycle was repeating itself: EELV, as soon as it was created, stopped being a 'new party' and transformed into Les Verts bis as the old guard and/or aspiring hacks took over (Duflot), began ignoring the membership again, alienated Cohn-Bendit enough so that he dropped out and were hard at work on figuring out how they could be joined at the hip with the PS again. As a result, EELV's leadership badly fumbled the 2012 electoral deal/political alliance with the PS, reinforcing the old image that the French greens since 1997 are nothing but the PS' semi-independent faction for environmentalist theatrics. And while Éva Joly is an excellent person of outstanding moral character and honesty, and I don't regret voting for her in 2012, she is a terrible politician and she led a horrible campaign in 2012 (a very austere and boring campaign) which ensured that EELV would win 1-2% instead of 7-10%. And following 2012, EELV, as we all know, completed its transformation into Les Verts bis by being a docile, obedient and useless junior partner in a government which paid lip-service to environmental issues and other fundamental green values (notably tolerance, respect for immigrants and federalism) because they were more interested in keeping their cozy benefits. Thankfully, Valls was a step too far for them, but they still have trouble breaking free from the toxic alliance with the PS and standing for something.
Fun fact of the day: I'm a fairly loyal EELV voter
