Clegg was saying a lot of good things before he was elected.

Now it's clear it was all lies and PR, and his real interest is in abetting the Tory agenda to the maximum possible extent.

This has been a consistent pattern by 'left' leaders since at least the mid 90s.

Hollande is already something of a Third Way-ist. So excuse my cynicism if I don't expect great things of him. (Although I'll be delighted if I'm proved wrong.)

Eurointelligence Daily Briefing: Complacency watch: Why raise the size of the ESM when the markets are calming? (19.03.2012)

Hollande does not manage to get an explicit support from the European left to renegotiate the fiscal pact

According to Les Echos, Francois Hollande on Saturday managed to overcome the impression of being isolated in Europe by bringing his European counterparts like SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel and Italy's Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani others to a common electoral rally to Paris. According to Le Figaro he mocked the ,,holy alliance" that conservative Europeans leaders like Angela Merkel, David Cameron, Mario Monti and Donald Tusk had put in place by agreeing not to meet with him during the election campaign. But the announcements about a renegotiation of the fiscal pact stayed very vague and the idea of a common ,,Paris Declaration" that Hollande would have liked to publish was dropped because of a lack of agreement on what to say on the fiscal pact, the paper writes. According to Les Echos, Gabriel said he was in favour of ,,complementing the treaty with a real European initiative in favour of growth" but he said nothing that the SPD would use its influence on the vote to force Merkel's hands. According to Financial Times Deutschland, however, Gabriel wants to wait for the French presidential elections before ratifying the fiscal pact in order to be able to force her to agree to an EU growth initiative.

There are three stories about the euro crisis: the Republican story, the German story, and the truth. -- Paul Krugman

Though he was for me the last Democrat left standing I still gave Obama six months before I despaired of his doing anything constructive about the problems with the banks and finance, so perhaps we should give Hollande at least until the summer solstice. In truth, from what I have seen of his positions on ET, I am not too optimistic of his being able to make the sort of fundamental challenges to the course and policies being followed to be able to succeed in effecting basic change.

Since the fall of 2008 I have believed and maintained that the problems with the existing system and the reasons why it must be reformed must be forcefully presented to the public  in order to prepare them to accept and then demand basic reforms. But the existing system remains a quasi-sacred order and candidates will only talk about changes at the margins. I find it hard to see that changing absent an even more fundamental collapse of that system - one that cannot be papered over with fiat currency created and given only to bankers.

At present all remain caught in the spell of the existing system. In Europe that takes the form of the myth of the EU and the Euro. It is as though the bankers have left us as wasps leave victim insects - paralyzed but alive as food for their larvae. Someone or some event must break the spell. The sooner the better.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."