Implosion looms for French socialists as 'irreconcilable' presidential candidates head for knock-out vote

TheThe two sides, the furthest apart of any in the French socialist primary elections, are “irreconcilable” to borrow the words of former prime minister Manuel Valls, who stepped down from government last month to take part in the race. He and Benoît Hamon, who served under Valls as education minister before leaving the government in protest over its drift to the Right, and who came in lead position in Sunday’s first-round result, will now face off together in the second and final round of the elections to choose a candidate for the Socialist Party and its allies in France’s presidential elections this spring.

Hamon garnered 36.2% of votes cast, while Valls came in second with 31.19%. Arnaud Montebourg, the leftist former economy minister who quit Valls’s government alongside Hamon in 2014, was third with 17.62% followed by, Vincent Peillon (6.83 %), François de Rugy (3.83 %), Sylvia Pinel (1.99 %), and Jean-Luc Bennahmias (1.01 %). 

The last socialist primaries were in 2011, when more than 3 million people cast their vote (and when François Hollande emerged victorious). This weekend’s turnout was way below, and became a subject of mounting controversy on Monday.

Those in charge of organizing the poll claim that just more than 1.6 million people turned out in the designated polling booths across the country, but that final total markedly contrasted the earlier, albeit incomplete, figure of almost 1.3 million. At the heart of the controversy is the fact that the earlier count and final count were separated by just two hours last night, while the announced share of the vote of each of the seven candidates taking part remained precisely the same, despite the addition of more than 300,000 votes.

On Sunday night the Hamon campaign team partied on a riverboat on the Seine, situated a stone’s throw from the Socialist Party headquarters in the Left Bank rue de Solferino in Paris. A mostly young crowd shouted their joy at the result which many observers just several months ago had never envisaged, eyeing fellow party leftist Montebourg as the main rebel challenger to the party’s old guard which, after President Hollande announced he would not stand for re-election, was represented by Valls.

Next Sunday’s final round will see two clear political currents do battle, in the shadow of two already declared presidential candidates standing outside the socialist camp. On the right of the socialists is Emmanuel Macron, who replaced Montebourg as economy minister and who stood down from Hollande’s government this summer to launch his presidential bid. He has so far drawn huge crowds to his campaign meetings and has been lent the support of several socialists, including some among Hollande’s entourage.

The other is Jean-Luc Mélencon, the radical-left firebrand whose  “France insoumise” (France unsubdued)  movement has taken over the presidential bidding by the French ‘Left of the Left’ parties, excluding the Trotskyist NPA party.

The question now is whether the Socialist Party can emerge from the primaries intact. Its General Secretary, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis put on a show of confidence on Sunday evening, speaking before the results of the first round were made public. “I salute all the candidates who honoured the primaries, by defending their idea with sincerity and respect,” he said. “We have succeeded this first round. “In face of the Right of [the confirmed conservative presidential candidate François] Fillon, in face of a far-right which is progressing in the shade, in face of fragmentation, of resentments, of the temptation of fatalism, together we demonstrate a possible path to success tomorrow.”

As soon as the results were declared, it was clear what is at stake in the result of the second round. “You, journalists, should now talk to Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” commented Paris MP and Hamon ally Pascal Cherki. “It was he who didn’t want to know about the primaries because of Hollande,” he added, referring to what was seen as the certainty of Hollande standing in the primary race until his announcement in December that he would not seek a second term of office. “What will he do now?” Cherki asked of Mélenchon. “Benoît Hamon has always said that convergences were possible with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Theer are issues to be discussed.”

Cherki said “voters wanted to turn the page, and above all write a new one”, adding: “Now there is Macron on one side, one could say the centre-left as a rapid summary even if there is a lot of Right in the centre-left, and on the other Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who represents the far-left, and I say that without a pejorative meaning.”

Benjamin Lucas, head of the Young Socialists, hailed an “awakening of voter on the Left”, adding that Hamon’s first-round lead was “the proof that the electorate of the Left is not resigned towards a Left which borrows from the Right its themes and discourse”, in what was a clear reference to former prime minister Manuel Valls.

Valls’s campaign party on Sunday evening was held at the Maison de l’Amérique latine, a cultural centre and townhouse situated a few hundred yards from the Socialist Party HQ, but appropriately on the opposite side from it to Hamon’s riverboat venue. His supporters were aware early in the evening that he would not be in first place, as a number of opinion polls had predicted. Those present included justice minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas and Henri Weber a former senator and now a prominent Socialist Party official. The mood was subdued. One of Valls’s supporters, Paris MP Christophe Caresche, dismissed what he called a “vote of letting of steam”. A pro-Valls campaign activist commented that “Hamon played on the populist thing, the current fashion, by saying that he would hand out 500 euros in a universal payment to everyone”.

Some in Valls camp eye joining Macron if Hamon wins

Sitting in front of a TV screen at the Valls campaign party was Jacky Bontems, a former deputy leader of the CFDT trades union, one of the largest in France, who had been active in trying to convince union members to support Valls. “After the Hollande-bashing, it’s [become] Valls-bashing,” he said, referring to the regular criticism from all political quarters of François Hollande, who has remained for most of his presidency at record levels of unpopularity in opinion polls. “The [Socialist Party] machine didn’t become very mobilized either. And Macron has siphoned off a share of Manuel Valls’s electorate.”  

Mohamed Sifaoui, a French-Algerian writer and filmmaker and supporter of Valls, protested at the role of one of the primary election candidates Vincent Peillon, who has been regarded by some as a pro-Hollande spoiler in the race. “He just caused shit,” said Sifaoui. His view was shared by another Valls supporter, Pierre Aidenbaum, mayor of the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. “Peillon, he’s a machination,” he said. “He was placed there to hold off Manuel Valls.”

When Valls arrived at the townhouse at about 9.40 p.m., the 40 or so activists present began playing up to the cameras, shouting “Manuel, president” and “we’re going to win”. In one corner of the room was MP Christophe Caresche, who said he hoped Valls would give a strong speech. “If we’re going to lose, at least let it be with honour,” he said.

Manuel Valls announced that there was now a choice before the socialist electorate between “a very clear choice between assured defeat and possible victory”, between what he called “unrealistic and un-fundable promises” and a “credible Left”. Echoing his recent campaign speeches, he spoke of “Trump”, “Putin’s Russia” and secularism, all issues on which he would not give up “one inch of ground”. He rounded on Hamon’s promise of introducing a “universal revenue” which “implicates a massive rise in taxes”. He described himself as the shield for all those who feared that next Sunday’s result could see the implosion of the Socialist Party, pulled apart between the candidatures of Mélenchon and Macron.

The atmosphere on the Hamon riverboat, meanwhile, the mood was quite different. Hamon’s supporters were boosted by the support given to him by the defeated Arnaud Montebourg, who called on his supporters to vote for Hamon next Sunday. That in itself would ensure victory for Hamon, whose campaign director Mathieu Hanotin said the result of the first round had provided  a “definitive clarification” of the results of Hollande’s five-year term of office, during which Valls served as interior minister and later prime minister. “It is not us who Manuel Valls is targeting this evening, it is the hundreds of thousands of people who came out” he said, adding that “aggressiveness” in politics was never a recipe for winning.    

“Tonight, by hitting hard, Valls is organizing the conditions for his complete defeat,” said Antoine Détourné, another Hamon supporter and member of the Socialist Party’s national council.

But some among the Valls camp gave a show of belief that all was still possible. “Nothing is engraved” said Hugues Fourage, spokesman for the socialist group in parliament, who underlined that Hamon rival-turned-ally Arnaud Montebourg had been critical of the universal revenue proposition put forward by Hamon.

“It’s not going to be easy, but it will be the opportunity for a clarification between the two [political] lines,” said Pierre Aidenbaum of the week ahead. He said he believed Valls could still win, on condition that “200,000 - 300,000 more people turn out to vote on Sunday”. He slammed Hamon for having left his post as education minister just days before the return to classes, in the late summer of 2014. “He’s not a statesman,” he said.  

As for the situation in which the Socialist Party finds itself following next weekend’s final round vote, Hugues Fourage admitted there was a “risk” of a division, but added “First we’lll win, and then we’ll see”. Christophe Caresche spoke of the “Corbynisation” of the party if Hamon wins, referring to the leader of the Labour Party in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn. Caresche refused to say whether he would rally behind Hamon if he became the party’s candidate, underlining that many of the rebel socialist MPs hostile to Hollande voted for Hamon on Sunday. “For five years they respected nothing in parliament,” he said of the rebels who had often refused to abide by the party’s instructions. “They’re not going to give us lessons.” Some among the Valls camp have been more explicit, threatening to join Emmanuel Macron’s campaign if Hamon wins the day on January 29th.

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• The French version of this report can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse