France’s Socialist Party presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo has vowed to continue her campaign despite signs that she has no chance of making it to the second round of the race in April.
While political analysts and opinion pollsters dismissed her, Hidalgo, who is mayor of Paris, said she remained the left’s best hope to lead France. She said it was too late to heal bitter divisions on the left, and accused rivals including the Greens of missing a historic opportunity to join forces.
Another five years of Emmanuel Macron would leave France in a dangerously “deplorable” state, he said. “It will be unruly. It will be unmanageable. He has not understood French. He has not understood the country. He sees the French as infants: there is he and a country of children waiting for the divine word”.
In an exclusive interview with The Guardian and two European newspapers, Hidalgo also questioned the validity of the much-publicized “people’s primaries,” an unofficial popular vote to nominate a preferred leftist presidential candidate that begins on January 27 and lasts until on Sunday.
Almost 450,000 people have signed up to participate, but the main left-wing candidates, Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot of the Green Party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the far-left La France Insoumise, refused to participate.
Only former Socialist Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, who threw her hat into the presidential election arena 11 days ago, has said she will respect the result.
“Whatever the result of the vote, Mélenchon will say, I continue; Jadot will say, I continue; I’m going to say continue. The primary popular it will run its course but it will have no consequence on my candidacy,” Hidalgo said.
Opinion polls have Hidalgo far behind with around 3% of voting intentions, a disastrous result that would leave the Socialist Party (PS) in an existential crisis. Taxpayers will not reimburse campaign expenses for candidates who get less than 5% of the vote in the first round, making it even more difficult for the party to fund candidates in the general election that follows.
In an editorial, Le Monde described the PS as a “dead star” “The presidential candidate [Hidalgo] is paying the price for the slow decline of a socialist party that is now a shadow of its former self with just 22,000 members,” he wrote. “Anne Hidalgo is not entirely to blame for her poor performance in the presidential election polls, which placed her below the 5% required for campaign expenses to be reimbursed.”
Polls currently show Macron is likely to be re-elected after facing either the far-right Rassemblement Nationale (National Rally)’s Marine Le Pen or the conventional-right Les Républicains candidate Valérie Pécresse in the runoff in April. Far-right candidate Éric Zemmour is in fourth place followed by Mélenchon, Jadot and Hidalgo.
Hidalgo responded to the electoral indications. “I’m not at 3%,” he said, though he couldn’t give a figure for his support. “I’m sure the dynamic can be changed because the real campaign hasn’t started yet. Emmanuel Macron has not yet declared himself a candidate and we still do not have all the candidates on the starting line. When it starts, a lot of things will happen very quickly,” he said.
“Let’s wait for the result of the April elections. Don’t tell me what the result will be today because the opinion polls say this or that.
“I got invited to TV shows and wondered what the hell I was doing there. All they wanted to talk about was polls, polls, polls, while at the same time there were articles explaining how polls were done and how those polls largely manufactured opinion.
“People told me that the problem with the polls was that it wasn’t talking about what the French really care about, like immigration and integration, but the French tell me that their real concerns are about their purchasing power, the future of their children, their health concerns…while all they hear in the media is about Zemmour.”
Émeric Bréhier, director of the observatory of political life of the left-wing Jean-Jaurès foundation and a professor at the Bordeaux Institute of Political Studies, said he believed the socialist party had lost the 2022 election.
“It is too late for the party to make a mark in this election. Every candidate on the left is swimming in their own lane and none of them want to give an inch. The Socialist Party is in trouble and has been for several years. I can’t see at this stage how we can get out of that,” he said.
Hidalgo agreed that the French left had lost its “compass” and needed to rally voters behind its 70-point social democratic program. He said the PS had performed strongly in the 2020 and 2021 local elections, and had a reserve of loyal grassroots support across France. His biggest regret, he said, was Jadot’s refusal to participate in a left-wing primary to select a candidate in late 2021.
“A primaries would have allowed us to put the debate back on our issues – the ecological, social and democratic crisis – and address the French, especially those on the left, on the issues that interest them and show that no, the left is not dead,” he said.
“We could have shown what we stand for, what our differences are and what unites us. It was a great personal risk for me, but I said that I would accept the result of that vote. It was a historic opportunity for the left to do this, but they refused. It is not possible now”.
He added: “Never, never can Mélenchon or Jadot win the second round. If the left has any chance of winning, it is with me… only I am capable of uniting from the center left to the center right”.
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism