A little over 6%, 6.36% exactly. Stunned by a resounding defeat in 2017, after five years in power, the Socialist Party now has another look at the score achieved by Benoît Hamon in the previous presidential election. Because, in 2022, the average of voting intentions in favor of its candidate, Anne Hidalgo, hardly reaches 2%. In two weeks, on the evening of the first round and its very likely elimination, the mayor of Paris will complete a campaign that looks like a way of the cross. And will not spare the PS, weaker than ever at the national level, an existential crisis.
The fiasco has been expected for several months. “It’s going to be a shock, but unlike Valérie Pécresse and the Republicans, Anne Hidalgo is quite prepared to be at 3%”squeaks a Socialist Party executive. “If she had started her campaign at 2% in the polls, we could have said that she struggled to exist. There, she starts at 10% and ends at 2%”, tackles a socialist deputy. The voice of François Hollande, who came to support Anne Hidalgo at a meeting in Limoges, Tuesday March 22, will probably not be enough either. “He is the rope that supported the hanged manmocks another elected official. Until the end of January, he tried to explain to Anne Hidalgo that she had to unplug. Limoges was the meeting place for hypocrites.”
From now on, the Socialist Party must face a series of questions, each one more difficult than the other. How to rebuild after a failure that promises to be painful? What ideas should be defended in view of the legislative elections? The most pressing question is that of Anne Hidalgo’s final score, on the evening of Sunday April 10. If it exceeds 5%, his campaign costs may be reimbursed, up to 8 million euros. If it does not cross this bar, only 800,000 euros will be granted to it.
This gap is not trivial for the Socialist Party, the cash to say the least starving. In 2019, it lost 5 million euros, before a deficit of 3.7 million euros in 2020. At the start of 2021, the PS had to lay off 12 employees, or around a quarter of the permanent workforce. Today, “there is not a considerable debt, only 1.2 million euros”analyzes the former deputy René Dosière, specialist in public finances.
“We are not going out of business, but the situation is difficult.”
René Dosière, former PS deputyat franceinfo
In anticipation of a complicated electoral spring, the PS sought to separate from its headquarters in Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne). It was there, near Paris, that the Socialists settled in 2018 after the sale of the historic headquarters on rue de Solférino, in the center of the capital. An exchange was planned with the premises of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, in the 9th arrondissement. The think tank backed out of this cross transaction due to a flood zone issue. The PS will therefore remain in Ivry-sur-Seine, without being able to count on the sale of this property. “We are not obsessed with the idea of moving from headquarters, the employees feel good there”defends the management.
However, they will be subject to a period of strong turbulence in the weeks and months to come. Because everyone at the PS is thinking about the consequences of another elimination in the first round. “We must project ourselves into the reconstruction of a left of government”said Anne Hidalgo on France 2, Thursday March 24, as if to evacuate her possible single-digit score as quickly as possible to focus on the aftermath.
François Hollande is not left out. “It’s up to us to be there, from April 10. It’s already tomorrow that we have to look. I’ll take my full part. I won’t give up anything that I myself have worn”, he launched before giving the floor to the socialist candidate, in Limoges. We lend the former president ambitions for the next legislative elections, in Corrèze, his stronghold. His relatives, who swept the hypothesis a few months ago, no longer exclude him today.
Candidate or not in June, François Hollande promised a “initiative” after the ballot. He, like others, are already looking into the reconstruction of the Socialist Party, of which he was the first secretary from 1997 to 2008. The work promises to be gigantic. “The PS will not get away with a congress, everything must change”believes Bernard Jomier, senator and adviser to Anne Hidalgo. “It is the refoundation that is coming.”
“We have to start again on the bottom. If it’s just to change a face, it’s not worth it.”
A member of Anne Hidalgo’s campaign teamat franceinfo
The post of Olivier Faure, first secretary since 2018, is clearly targeted. “His record is catastrophic”criticizes an elected official from Ile-de-France. “His motion for his re-election was ‘From rebirth to alternation’. Today, it is rather towards the cemetery that we are going.” Implicated, the first secretary expects difficult weeks. “Those who want to rock me will try to rock me”he confides.
Will the expected overhaul of the Socialist Party go so far as to change its name, the first since the end of the French Section of the Socialist International (SFIO) in 1969? “We should turn the page of the PS, the party is at the end of it”defends Bernard Jomier. “In the absence of a name, the ideas that are called ‘social democrats’ remain present”insists René Dosière.
“The name change is the culmination. The Apple company, when it was going badly, first changed the product to seduce again.”
A tenor of the PSat franceinfo
The reconstruction will in any case take place under the interested eye of those who have already joined Emmanuel Macron… and who seek to attract new disappointed socialists. Already, Territories of Progress (TDP), the movement of the left wing of the current majority, watches with appetite the bursting of the PS. “If they are below 5%, it will be the biggest political catastrophe of the PS under the Fifth Republic. Today, there is a great opportunity for the story of social democracy to continue but with Emmanuel Macron if he is re-electedhopes Eduardo Rihan-Cypel, former PS deputy, who now supports the outgoing president.
Will hordes of elected socialists convert to macronism? “There must already be a herd”, mocks a former parliamentarian. And the Socialist deputies, they want to continue to evolve in a pack. The 29 parliamentarians of the PS group are playing their seats in the National Assembly next June. And the slap expected in two weeks complicates their task. “We have no money to campaign”fears a frame. “We are not condemned to be less numerousreplies another. On the ground, many people tell us that for the presidential election, it’s burnt out for us. On the other hand, they will vote for us in June so as not to give Emmanuel Macron a free hand.”
While the Head of State’s campaign is marked by liberal proposals on the RSA or pensions, “We will have to focus on these themes”, anticipates Bernard Jomier. The senator recalls Nicolas Sarkozy’s controversial proposal on social VAT in 2012, responsible according to him for a loss of “30 to 50 seats on the right” to subsequent legislation. “Emmanuel Macron’s proposal on the RSA, it can be his social VAT”wants to believe a PS deputy.
While waiting for this uncertain brightening before the summer, the Socialist Party wants to finish the presidential sequence with dignity. However, a dilemma could arise in view of the second round. “If it is Jean-Luc Mélenchon who qualifies against Emmanuel Macron, there will be an explosion of the PSrejoices a member of the government. He will finally have to respond to his tug of war between radicalism and social democracy.
Already, Senator Patrick Mennucci has stated in the columns of Release that he would vote for the incumbent president, while Anne Hidalgo’s spokeswoman, Dieynaba Diop, said on franceinfo that her personal choice would lead her to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Eliminated and then torn, the party with the rose could well end the campaign totally faded.