French history is littered with spectacular comebacks, from the Emperor Napoleon to Charles de Gaulle to Edith Piaf, writes John Lichfield. Could François Hollande, the cuddliest of politicians but tougher than he seems, return to the Elysée Palace nine years after his presidency fizzled into insignificance?
He thinks so. At the age of 71, Hollande is “preparing” for a run for the presidency next year. He has not yet declared his hand but he is counting his cards.
In an interview with Marianne magazine this month, he suggested that the key issue may be “who appears presidential” when compared with the young, glib and untested Jordan Bardella, the likely candidate of the Far Right.
Who better, Hollande implied, than someone who had already done the job?
That is a strange argument. Who better than someone who has already failed? Who better than someone whose approval rating once sank to 13 percent, the lowest of any President of the Fifth Republic?
Who better than the only French President who did not attempt to win a second term? Who better than a man whose mis-spelled nickname, Flamby, is a reference to a popular, caramel pudding?
And yet Hollande’s chances are taken seriously by people other than Hollande himself. Jordan Bardella told journalists last month that the ex-President was one of only three of a crowd of contenders who might reach the Round Two runoff to confront him next May.
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The veteran political analyst Pascal Perrineau told BFMTV that Hollande might have the image of a “loser” but even those French voters who disliked him thought that he had the “manner” and the “capacity” to be President. If next year’s campaign is fought against the background of international crisis – recession or even the threat of war – voters might prefer a 71-year-old marinated in politics to a 30-year-old with no experience of anything except TikTok.
Maybe. I don’t buy it.
I have met François Hollande several times. He is a friendly, decent man. Criticism of his presidency was partly justified but greatly exaggerated.
His economic policies in the second half of his term prepared the way for a fall in unemployment which he had promised but could not deliver during his presidency. During the terrible year of the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks in 2015, he projected a soothing determination and calm.
Hollande says that he knows that he cannot run on the same programme that he did in 2012, when he campaigned to the Left before governing to the Centre-Right. He has promised “ten strong new ideas” by the autumn. To show that he knows that politics have changed, he has started his own podcast.
But Hollande belongs to a political world which no longer exists – one which he helped to destroy. He shattered the old Socialist Party when he governed economically to the Right after 2014. Rebellions against Hollande (and his finance minister Emmanuel Macron) created the space for the advance of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the hard left anti-European La France Insoumise (LFI). They also created the space for Macron to abandon/betray him and launch his would-be revolutionary movement of the centre.
The Socialists won 28.63 percent of the first-round presidential vote in 2012. By 2017, the Socialist score had sunk to 4.82 percent. In 2022 it was 2.2 percent.
Hollande is blamed and detested for this collapse by much of the reduced Socialist Party. The moderate, pro-European PS members and voters who were once Hollande’s base are now divided between a minority wing of the Parti Socialiste and Macron’s Renaissance.
Where will the voters come from to give Hollande the 20 to 23 percent he will need to reach the two candidate run-off? Recent polls give him 6 to 8 percent of the vote.
Hollande is said to believe that his chance will come in December or January when voters of the soft left and centre start desperately to look for an alternative to Bardella or Mélenchon. All will depend on whether another champion of the moderate left has emerged by then.
The infinite capacity of the French Left for personal jealousies and minor nuances may favour him. As things stand, there are enough likely or declared candidates from the non-Mélenchon Left to field a rugby team and several substitutes. The latest to declare this week is Bernard Cazeneuve, Hollande’s final prime minister who now runs his own centre-left party.
How to pre-select a possible soft Left winner?
The first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, is committed to a primary of the Left and Greens (save the LFI) in October to decide a candidate (preferably himself). The Socialist leader in the National Assembly, Boris Vallaud, wants the party to choose its own champion before the summer (maybe himself) and then decide a programme and a candidate with the wider Left (by means still to be decided).
The Euro MP and leader of the allied party Place Publique, Raphael Glucksmann, supports that idea but wants no primary and hopes to build on his own relatively strong position of 10-12 percent in the opinion polls.
This muddled infighting means there will almost certainly be no primary of the Left which is exactly what Hollande wants. He, like Glucksmann, believes his chances are best served by a mass primary of the opinion polls. One candidate will separate from the pack and the anti-Mélenchon Left, desperate for a winner, will gradually assemble behind them.
Why should that be the 71-year-old ex-President is unclear. Perhaps Hollande believes that his “ten strong new ideas by autumn” will do the trick. The danger is that the proliferation of soft Left candidates will allow Mélenchon to claim, once again, to be the only credible standard bearer of “la Gauche”.
My own view is that no Left candidate, neither Mélenchon nor a moderate, is likely to reach the Second Round – and that may be a good thing. Bardella is beatable but he is much more likely to be beaten in the runoff by a candidate of the centre and right such as the former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.
Many disappointed left-wing voters will shift to the centre again in Round Two to defeat the Far Right. Right and Centre voters are less likely to switch to the Left.
It is going to be an odd election in odd and dangerous times. Odd things could happen.
What are the chances of President Hollande 2: The return of Flamby? Very small.
