Anyone but JLM - the French left in search of a candidate

I want to turn now to the left, not least because on 22 April, the French Socialist Party (hereafter the PS), launched a new political programme. Comprising 800 proposals, under 20 different subheadings spread over 144 pages, it represents an outline to provide the PS (and perhaps the wider left) with a ‘un socle programmatique’ (that word socle again, meaning foundation or base) for 2027 and beyond. It’s the fruit of a year’s work overseen by MEP Chloé Ridel and commissioned by PS first secretary Olivier Faure. Its central theme is freedom. But even before its release, it was being criticised as the work of a clique close to Faure, whose position is by no means uncontested. But let’s go back a couple of stages.

The French left has problems similar to the right. Just as the right has to try to deal with the ‘temptation’ of the far-right or of ‘porosité’ at the boundaries between itself and the Rassemblement National, so the left has to deal with Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his La France Insoumise (LFI). In terms of the presidential election, the matter is very straightforward. Mélenchon has never had anything to do with a left-wing primary in any of the three elections where he has stood before and is not about to start, so he is out of that particular equation. The challenge for the non-LFI left is to find a candidate who can get past Mélenchon and into the second round against… well, we imagine Bardella. The problem is that Mélenchon took 20% of the vote in 2017 and 22% in 2022. In the new fragmented world of French presidential elections, those are big numbers. In 2022, he finished third, was just 1.2% (or 400,000 votes) behind Marine Le Pen and has never quite forgiven the Communist candidate Fabien Roussel for taking 2.5% of the vote that Mélenchon reckoned (not unreasonably) he could have hoovered up. Mélenchon v Macron, end of Le Pen. Bang!

Now, the hawk-eyed observers of French politics among you will be wondering whatever happened to the left-wing alliances of 2022 (the Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale or NUPES) and 2024 (the Nouveau Front Populaire - NFP)? Well, just as the NUPES alliance couldn’t survive the profound differences in approach and doctrine between the plural left and the policies of the dear leader, neither could the NFP. And it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Legislative elections in 577 constituencies, where local deals can and are cut is not the same as a presidential election. Not even close.

The plural left, you say? Well, yes. Between Mélenchon’s LFI and the centre lies a group of parties stretching from a hard left, represented by François Ruffin, through the Communist PCF (Roussel has again secured the nomination), the Ecologists behind Marine Tondelier, to the PS and various other small parties including one called Place Publique. Set up in 2018, when French social democracy was lying shattered on the metaphorical ground, Place Publique was originally intended by one of its founders, the essayist Raphaël Glucksmann, as an umbrella organisation pulling together the whole of the non-LFI, pro-European, social-democratic left. In 2019, Glucksmann headed the PP-PS list for the European elections and has been an MEP ever since, but the umbrella idea has never really taken off and Place Publique has become just another star in the French centre-left nebula. What matters is that Glucksmann has made it clear that he intends to stand. The question is, will he submit to a primary?

Other, smaller parties held primaries before, but the PS was the first of the major players to make it part of the pre-presidential circus, in 2006 and in response to their candidate and then PM, Lionel Jospin, failing to get through to the run-off in the 2002 election. For the record, Jospin campaigned poorly, forgetting that he needed to secure the left-wing vote in the first round before pivoting to the centre for the second. But he was also undermined by the presence of four other candidates from his governing plural left coalition. Not only did this allow Jean-Marie Le Pen through to the run-off, but it also handed Jacques Chirac a second term on a plate, catapulted Nicolas Sarkozy into the public eye and the rest is history. So, the PS held a primary in 2006, won by Ségolène Royal, in 2011 won by François Hollande, and in 2016 won by Benoît ‘universal income’ Hamon. The choice of the latter was, however, such a catastrophe that the exercise was not repeated for 2022. Perhaps it should have been. Anne Hidalgo, then mayor of Paris, was chosen without a ballot and went on to garner just 1.5% of the vote, less than a quarter of Hamon’s 6.4% in 2017.

As things stand, the PS does not have a very obvious candidate. Faure looks well in an overcoat and is an astute tactician, but he’s less good at the detail and is by no means universally liked within the party. His handling of the recent municipal elections, in particular second round alliances with LFI, did not go over well with all members or voters. Worse, the success of the Rassemblement National in rural and periurban France has been at the expense of the PS and does not bode well for Socialist senators seeking re-election this September. There is a potential challenger in the shape of Boris Vallaud, leader of the Socialist group in the National Assembly, whose book Nos vies ne sont pas des marchandises - our lives are not merchandise or not for sale - is due to drop on 24 April. (I’ve ordered my copy, from la FNAC natch.)

Then there are the Ecologists. Marine Tondelier has emerged as a smart and media-savvy figure, but she has recently announced that she is pregnant. Now, obviously that is not nor should it be an obstacle in and of itself to her running in a primary and that’s her call to make. The alternative might be senator Yannick Jadot, who ran in 2022, has a national profile and who joined Vallaud and Glucksmann at the weekend to call for a broad-left programme to defeat the far-right. (Echoes of Barnier on the right: programme first, candidate after.)

There are other figures too, ‘Une primaire de Ruffin à Glucksmann’ is one of the current commonplaces. François Ruffin is a journalist and broadcaster, who has carved himself out a niche on the left of the left. Based in Picardy, he set up his own party called Picardie Debout! (Stand Up Picardy! Now just known as Debout!). Elected to the National Assembly in 2017, he aligned himself with the LFI, but split from Mélenchon in 2024 and has become part of a small group of prominent political figures (including Clementine Autain and Alexis Corbière) who we all now love because they have have fallen out with Himself.

The question remains. How do you choose the candidate? An open primary where you invite le peuple de gauche to sign up to a pledge, pay a nominal fee that covers costs? Internal party primaries? Will everyone play the game? And can any of them finish ahead of Mélenchon? And by the way, don’t pay too much attention to polls that are currently putting Mélenchon on 14%. They said the same in 2016 and 2021.

STOP PRESS - I have just seen a note that Bernard Cazeneuve, PM at then end of the Hollande presidency is putting together a committee to support his campaign.
Also, some pollsters are running the name of Lucie Castets, the former Paris city hall civil servant who was adopted by the NRP as their candidate for PM in the summer of 2024. In the recent municipal elections, Castets became a member of Paris city council and also the mayor of the 12th arrondissment, which used to be known as Reuilly and covers the south-eastern corner of the city north of the Seine and includes the Bois de Vincennes. Solid left-wing territory.