Furious socialists turn backs on 'verbally incontinent' Hollande

PresidentPresident François Hollande’s controversial comments in a book of interviews with two journalists that was published last week have proved to be the last straw for many of those in his own political camp who until now remained loyal to him.

The book Un président ne devrait pas dire ça (A President Should Not Say That), made up of 61 ‘fireside’ interviews with Hollande by journalists Gérard Davet et Fabrice Lhomme, has caused a storm because of Hollande’s insults aimed at a wide number of people who include the judiciary, footballers, his political opponents and allies, and the rebels on the Left of the Socialist Party. He has also commented that there are too many immigrants in France, and that Islam has “a problem”. He was forced into making a public apology to high-ranking magistrates who he called “cowardly”.

The transcripts of the separate interviews, held over several years, were not vetted by Hollande before the publication of the book, but he has not contested their veracity. For many commentators, and above all for those in his party who were preparing to support his until now expected re-election bid in 2017, the president has shown at best a recklessness that may prove political suicide.

A number of dumbfounded socialist Members of Parliament (MPs) this week could barely disguise their anger at the latest major political blunder by Hollande, just as he was positioning himself for the Left’s primary elections next January to decide its presidential candidate. “By shooting oneself in the foot so often, we’re going to run out of bullets and feet,” commented socialist MP Laurent Grandguillaume in an interview with financial daily Les Echoes.

“I have already had a hundred or so MPs on the phone, I think I’m going to have another one hundred,” said Bruno Le Roux, head of the parliamentary socialist group, speaking earlier this week in the Quatre-Colonnes salon of the National Assembly, where MPs traditionally meet with the press. “There is upset, of course. For some there is anger.”

That Tuesday morning, when the group was meeting together, the few Socialist Party MPs who agreed to talk to the press were on the defensive, some displaying a forced irritation and others a false naivety. MP Marie-Arlette Carlotti, a former junior minister for the disabled in the first of Hollande’s governments, used diversionary tactics. “I first of all read the article in last week’s Nouvel Observateur,” she said, referring to an interview with Hollande published by news weekly L'Obs and which was the front cover story (see right), headlined with the quote “I am ready”, referring to the president’s re-election bid. “It was very, very interesting,” she added.

The interview appeared the same day as the publication of the book Un président ne devrait pas dire ça (A President Should Not Say That), made up of 61 ‘fireside’, conversational interviews with Hollande by journalists Gérard Davet et Fabrice Lhomme, recorded over several years of his presidency. The timing accentuated the anger and mockery of some. ”They’re really a bunch of clowns in the Elysée,” spat  Benoît Hamon, who sits on the Left of the party, a former education minister under Hollande who resigned in disagreement over the government’s austerity policies.

 “The president presides, the government governs, and it’s the president who is the master of the timetable,” pronounced socialist MP and Hollande loyalist Sébastien Denaja. Speaking to the press in the Quatre-Colonnes salon, he even “formally” denied the existence of an open letter of support by MPs for Hollande’s expected candidature in the primary elections of the Left to decide its candidate for the presidential race. But it was an embarrassed attempt at damage control, for the open letter had, nevertheless, been on the point of publication, signed by 170 MPs, 90 senators and 75 heads of the Socialist Party’s regional federations. The move was scuppered by the publication last Thursday of A President Should Not Say That, after which several parliamentarians removed their names from the list of supporters.

“The book has reshuffled the cards a bit,” said Senator Didier Guillaume, who heads the socialist group in the Senate, in an interview - also on Tuesday - with the French world service radio RFI. “I call a spade a spade. I don’t speak with duplicity, so as of that moment [of the book’s publication] we’re no longer in the situation of coming out with the list [of support for Hollande’s candidature] that was very numerous [in signatures by] pals, friends, parliamentarians who wanted to support François Hollande. The time is no longer ripe for that. The hour has come today when François Hollande must address the French people.”

The question on everyone’s lips now is whether the book was the final blow to the hopes of a president who still trails at record levels of unpopularity in opinion surveys and whose authority is contested within his own camp. There is also the other, more obscure, question as to whether Hollande is deliberately seeking to eliminate himself from the field of possible candidates. “The ball is in his court,” said Socialist Party first secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadélis in an interview with BFM-TV, adding that while he could “explain” the making of the book “I don’t excuse the phrases” uttered by Hollande.

“What is at stake is the existence of social democracy in this country,” commented socialist MP Patrick Menucci, one of the party’s leading figures in Marseilles. “It is not a problem of an individual, the question is a political one, that is the future of a political current. It needs to be clear if there’s a capacity to bounce back. We’ll know rapidly […] the human situation is not easy for us.”

Socialist MP Olivier Faure worked closely with Hollande when the latter was head of the Socialist Party (between 1997-2008), and was a government loyalist during the early stages of Hollande’s presidency. “It’s for François Hollande to find the means to reassure us,” said Faure. “Me, I’ve never wanted to sign an appeal [for Hollande to stand for the 2017 elections] at all. François Hollande has the ability to spring back, it’s for him to demonstrate this. One doesn’t sign off an open cheque.”

Speaking to French daily Le Figaro, socialist MP Philippe Doucet, who represents a constituency in the Val d’Oise département (county) north of Paris, and who sits on the party’s national council, said that at a meeting with prime minister Manuel Valls on Monday he expressed the “dumbfounded” sentiment of a number of socialists “including the loyalists” following publication of the book. “They say to us ‘it’s not possible’,” added Doucet.

'What an absurdity, what naivety'

A heavy atmosphere also fills the ministerial corridors, and to a greater degree than in parliament. 2016 has been a particularly testing one for the socialists, with events such as the aborted move to introduce the stripping of French nationality from those convicted of terrorist crimes, and the hotly contested liberal-leaning reform of the labour laws. Even those most loyal to the ruling party have been shaken.

But since the end of last week, some appear to have acknowledged that a final rupture has come about. “The violin is being played on the deck of the Titanic,” commented one ministerial advisor, whose name is withheld. Asked if Hollande is still the best candidate for the Left in 2017, one junior minister, speaking earlier this week on condition her name was withheld, answered: “Frankly, I don’t know.” Asked whether she would have said the same thing just a week earlier she unhesitatingly said “No”, adding: “For a certain time now there has been a divide between citizens and some of the decisions taken [by government].” She said the publication of the book of interviews of Hollande by Davet and Lhomme “upsets everyone, all the more so given that we were already pretty fragile, what with the morbid atmosphere that reigns in the socialist group”.   

Even Jean-Marc Ayrault, who served as Hollande’s first prime minister from 2012 until a government reshuffle in March 2014, and who is now French foreign affairs minister, dropped his usual discreet demeanour during a meeting this week with the association of French  diplomatic correspondents. “A president shouldn’t say that. It’s the title of the book, and it’s the only valid thing in the book,” he commented. One of the book’s revelations was Hollande’s remark that he had first envisaged replacing Ayrault in the autumn of 2013, and that he had discussed the issue with Ayrault’s successor, Manuel Valls.

A Socialist Party staffer who works at the National Assembly, who asked that his identity be withheld because he feared otherwise losing his job, echoed the shock that party MPs and officials express. The man, who supported Hollande during the 2011 socialist primaries to decide their candidate in the 2012 presidential elections, is a self-proclaimed social democrat. “I am dismayed,” he said. “What an absurdity, what naivety. I remember the hope we had five years ago […] There are however good things in the track record [of Hollande’s presidency]. But I don’t see how to go about a campaign. A generation of [party] militants has been killed off.”

Former minister Benoît Hamon, who has announced he will run in the socialist primaries, said the socialists felt “shame” at the book. “There is a sort of verbal incontinence. One just wants to say ‘shut up, you’.” But aside the party rebels on the Left, including Hamon and three other declared candidates for the primaries, some socialist MPs are calling for a switch to a ‘Plan B’. One of them, Yann Galut, who represents a constituency in the Cher département of west-central France, has openly urged his colleagues, via a Tweeted message (see below), to "take back the controls”.

Senator Luc Carvounas, a political ally of Prime Minister Manuel Valls was just as scathing of Hollande in an interview published last weekend on the website L’Opinion.“We’re asked to go off and do battle for him in the coming weeks, but by ranting on about everything and anybody, it has become indefensible,” he said.

The socialists are now openly asking who could replace Hollande. “If he doesn’t run, there has to be a buffer candidate between [maverick leftist former economy minister, Arnaud] Montebourg and Valls or [right-leaning former economy minister, Emmanuel] Macron,” said one of Hollande’s entourage, speaking on condition his name is withheld. For that role, some in the socialist camp are eying education minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, or even Hollande’s former partner and now his environment minister, Ségolène Royal.  

Meanwhile, in the camp of Manuel Valls, there is a fast-mounting belief he might throw his hat into the ring. Valls, who took part in the meeting of the socialist parliamentary group on Tuesday morning, arriving with a smile on his face and leaving without making any comment to the press, has begun placing a distance with Hollande. During a visit to Canada and the neighbouring French territory of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon last week, he declared: “There must be dignity. There must be modesty […] I really want, through the track record that is mine, to represent this modern, [democratic] republican Left that looks out at the world.”

Meanwhile, one of Valls’s ministers, speaking to Mediapart on condition his name is withheld, commented: “It is fortunate that Valls is prime minister. He holds things together. And François Hollande is lucky. If Valls wasn’t so loyal, the putsch would already be in place.” But given the smile on his face Tuesday morning, the prime minister’s loyalty may soon reach its limit, and which is one that Hollande has set despite himself.

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The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse