It’s only a name NEW parties are constantly sprouting up in Europe’s fertile political landscape. It is more unusual to find established parties taking on new names. Yet this is what Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, plans to do at a rally in Paris this weekend. As part of his bid to run again for the presidency in 2017, the irrepressible leader of the centre-right UMP is rebranding the party Les Républicains (The Republicans).
Mr Sarkozy’s party makeover is part of an improbable political comeback, an effort to reinvent himself as a fresh force. When the ex-president returned last year from the shortest political retirement in recent history, taking over a party tainted by in-fighting and financing scandals, he wanted a clean break. He overhauled the top jobs and promised a primary to select a presidential candidate. And he picked a new name and logo. These go to a vote of party members on May 28th-29th.
The new name is not to everybody’s taste. Some find it baffling that a party descended from Charles de Gaulle, who marked his distance from the United States and…
The Economist: Europe
