Elections in France | The French left “in agony” four months before the presidential election

(Paris) Weakened, divided, the French left remains stuck with four months of the presidential election and the latest proposal from the socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, to organize a primary has been opposed by a scathing refusal of all of its environmentalist, communist and radical left competitors.

While all eyes in France have been turned in recent months towards the trajectories and breakthroughs of right-wing and far-right candidates, the left, rolled in 2017 with the election of Emmanuel Macron, remains largely inaudible and its seven candidates each collect between 2% and 10% at most in the polls and less than 25% of the total voting intentions.

On Wednesday evening, the socialist Anne Hidalgo, struggling in the polls predicting her between 3 and 7% of the vote and whose candidacy never took off, made a surprise proposal: a primary on the left to stop the dispersion and stand up to the right and the far right.

“I know that if we do not make this rally, there will be no possibility for this left to continue to exist in our country”, she solemnly declared on the evening television news. A few hours later, the proposal seemed already stillborn, its main competitors having opposed it to an end of inadmissibility.

“No, I will not participate in a primary of the left,” asserted the ecologist Yannick Jadot, who is between 6 and 9% of the voting intentions in the first round and whose candidacy has already been formalized after a primary among the Green. For environmentalists, the proposal of the mayor of Paris is a “tactical maneuver” which does not take into account the “basic problem: social democracy is no longer the new historical horizon, it is ecology”, one of Mr. Jadot’s spokespersons, Delphine Batho, told AFP.

The rebels (radical left), whose candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (10% in the polls) has been campaigning for more than a year, also categorically reject the idea of ​​a primary, believing that the candidates have too different projects. “This is the last chance proposition for her,” mocked rebellious MP Danièle Obono.

“If you doubt your candidacy, come and join me! “, For his part launched the communist Fabien Roussel, given between 1 and 3% in the polls, but who intends to be maintained until the end.

But for M^me Hidalgo, who spoke Thursday evening on the LCI television channel, “this response too rapid to be serious will undoubtedly move, under the effect of the demand of left-wing citizens who say ‘unite'”. “The train is gone, get on it dear comrades,” she told her competitors.

Only the former socialist Arnaud Montebourg, himself in great difficulty – he never exceeded 2% – had proposed, before the proposal of the mayor of Paris, to “offer his candidacy for a common project and candidate “.

“Disastrous”

Questioned by AFP, political scientist Gérard Grunberg drew up a clear statement and deplored “a collective shipwreck”.

For the political scientist, who was a member of the Socialist Party with a social democratic tendency, the socialists “made the mistake of thinking that the election of Macron in 2017 was an accident and that we would quietly return to a traditional left-right alternation. They are no longer a governing party, and they have been thinking for years of remaking the union of the left when it is over for a long time, it is each for himself, in his hallway ”.

With four months before the election, outgoing President Emmanuel Macron, who has not yet declared his candidacy, still remains in the lead in voting intentions (25%) for the first round, but must face a breakthrough in the candidate of the republican right LR, the president of the Paris region Valérie Pécresse, officially appointed last weekend at the end of a primary of the militants.

On the far right side, Marine Le Pen is on par with M^me Pécresse (16%), ahead of the former identity polemicist and ultra radical Eric Zemmour (14%).