Concerning the members of his team drawn from the wide net of civil society, as opposed to those from the Socialist Party apparatus, Benoît Hamon has surrounded himself with experts solidly anchored to the Left.
There is the economist Thomas Piketty, author of the best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (and who stepped down last year as an advisor to Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the British Labour Party, after less than 12 months in the job), and his wife and fellow economist Julia Cagé. There is also Nicolas Hazard, a specialist in social enterprise, sociologist Dominique Meda, a recognised expert on gender parity issues, and Elisa Lewis and Roman Slitine, both advocates of participative democracy. Salah Amokrane, of the Leftist Motivé-e-s movement in Toulouse, is an advisor on social justice and equality.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
But the makeup of his political team is closer to the classic structure of the French Socialist Party than its leftist “rebel” current. While it counts a number of Hamon allies and those close to his leftist rival in the campaign, Arnaud Montebourg, (these include Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, party “rebel” MPs Michel Pouzol, Jérôme Guedj, Jean-Marc Germain, Mathieu Hanotin and Aurélie Filippetti – former culture minister under Hollande and who is Montebourg’s partner), there are notably those close to President François Hollande (Senator Frédérique Espagnac), others allied to Hamon’s final-round opponent in the primaries, former prime minister Manuel Valls (Senator Luc Carvounas), and supporters of former education minister Vincent Peillon (Senator David Assouline). Also present are Socialist Party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadélis and junior ministers Axelle Lemaire and Matthias Fekl.
This diverse representation is considered to be the sign of a certain party unity brought about by Hamon. It purports to be the proof that, following Hamon’s election as the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate, the forecasted haemorrhage of the party’s rightwing towards maverick centrist Emmanuel Macron, who served as Hollande’s economy minister until throwing his hat into the presidential race last year, has been cauterized. In the words of one of Hamon’s inner circle, it is the demonstration that he has “enriched his political programme while maintaining [its] direction”.
EELV Green party presidential candidate Yannick Jadot appears undisturbed by this rapprochement of seemingly incompatible aspirations and, with the support of influential Green MP Noël Mamère, is expected to withdraw his candidature after agreeing a pact with Hamon, and notably an agreement on phasing out nuclear energy production and the introduction of proportional representation in parliamentary elections.
But the atmosphere is quite different concerning Hamon’s relationship with radical-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the movement La France Insoumise (Insurbordinate France) which was created as the vehicle for his presidential bid. “I won’t swap bits of manifesto against seats in the parliamentary elections,” said Mélenchon when questioned by regional daily La Provence about a petition signed by about 60,000 people which called, as of the first round of the socialist primary contest in January when Hamon emerged as clear favourite to win the socialist nomination, for Mélenchon to enter into an electoral pact with Hamon and Jadot. “Do you believe for just one second that if benoît Hamon and me embrace each other that hundreds of thousands of people would jump with enthusiasm and forget everything? Quite the opposite, it would be a mass deception for all those who are not ready to grant an amnesty to the Socialist Party.” Referring to François Hollande’s 2012 presidential campaign speech at a meeting at Le Bourget, near Paris, when he pledged leftwing policies which he never later enacted (and notably denounced the world of finance as his “enemy”), Mélenchon added: “They won’t be had for a second time with the blow of the Bourget speech.”
That statement was unsurprising. On February 5th, Mélenchon said he would be prepared to work with Hamon on condition that the latter presented “clarity” about his programme, meaning that Hamon should give up on his association with the Socialist Party rightwing and remove allies of Manuel Valls from standing for the parliamentary elections which will, in June, follow the presidential vote.
That is where the historical point of rupture lies. Mélenchon represents a line of rejection, a demand for disengagement with what the Socialist Party represents, while Hamon is in the position of party heir – solidly on the Left, but heir nonetheless. It is a fundamental confrontation, in the etymological sense, and which is a throwback to 40 years of history.
By definition, the French Socialist Party is a hotchpotch of elements, as shaped by the late François Mitterrand – a ramshackle affair but electorally effective. It brought together in government, after Mitterrand’s election as president in 1981, such diverse figures as Jean-Pierre Chevènement and Michel Rocard, Gaston Deferre and Robert Badinter, and - during the 1997-2002 socialist government under prime minister Lionel Jospin - Martine Aubry (who introduced the 35-hour week) and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Within that government Jean-Luc Mélenchon served as vocational education and training minister, alongside Pierre Moscovici, then European affairs minister (later appointed finance minister under François Hollande, now European Commissioner for Economic and Financial affairs).
The 2005 referendum on the new European Constitution broke up this heteroclite alliance, provoking a revolt that was itself full of contradictions, with Mélenchon campaigning against ratification of the treaty alongside Laurent Fabius, both of them in opposition to the position of François Hollande.
Since then, Mélenchon has cut away, staking his political future on the creation of a movement purely leftwing, while the Socialist Party, pulled this way and that by antagonistic forces, continued on its path, eventually winning the presidential elections of 2012.
In their own way, Hollande and Valls, once in power, reflected Mélenchon’s intuition, but in reverse. They decided to purge French social-democracy, until then a more socialist movement than European social-democracy, by rejecting the party’s leftwing. In the end, it did not create a new Socialist Party but, rather, gave rise to an “avatar” in the form of Emmanuel Macron.
Today, amid the chaos of the presidential elections, Hamon’s ambition is to step back in time and create a bygone Socialist Party, one that is full of contradictions but nevertheless effective at the ballot box. What Mélenchon is calling for is, on the opposite, an end to the conception of a plural Left – and that Hamon join him.
Hamon wants to save the Socialist Party and Mélenchon hopes to dissolve it. Except for a huge surprise (and it should be said that this year’s presidential election campaign has witnessed so many that nobody can be certain of anything), neither Hamon nor Mélenchon will withdraw their separate candidatures.
In the end, what might occur between now and the first round of voting on April 23rd is not only a socialist congress as predicted by media observers, but a congress of all of the French Left.
By placing Mélenchon ahead of Hamon, or Hamon ahead of Mélenchon, it is the voters who will indicate which of either is most in touch with the aspirations of the leftwing electorate. Their choice will be between an uncompromising programme, whatever the electoral price that demands, or a composite approach with concessions.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse