He was supposed to be the third man of the French Socialist primary held on Sunday. While all eyes were on Manuel Valls, the steely former Prime Minister, and Arnaud Montebourg, the charismatic former Economy Minister, the somewhat subdued former education minister Benoît Hamon was never considered a potential frontrunner. And yet only a couple of weeks after Francois Fillon’s shock victory in the conservative primary, history seems to be repeating itself.
Hamon has not won yet, but with over 36 percent of the votes he has a comfortable advance after the first round. Valls, who finished second with 31.1 percent of the votes, was quick to state that ‘a new campaign has started’ ahead of the second round next Sunday. But the odds are definitely on Hamon’s side. Montebourg, who ended up being the third man with 17.5 percent of the votes yesterday, announced that he would be supporting Hamon and sealed Valls’s fate.
Hamon and Montebourg left the government together in August 2014 in a protest against Hollande and Valls’s economic agenda. They became leaders of a rebellious anti-austerity movement within the Socialist party, which seriously undermined Hollande’s authority and made legislation very difficult to get through Parliament – including the controversial labour law voted on last year.
Hamon is campaigning on a ‘left of the left’ platform. He wants to establish a basic income, increase the minimum wage, reduce even further the 35-hour working week and give foreigners the right to vote in local elections. He is big on ecological issues with a plan to get rid of diesel by 2025, and he wants to legalise euthanasia and cannabis consumption.
However surprising Hamon’s win might be, he has as much of a chance of becoming president as Jeremy Corbyn has of winning a general election. The low turnout in the first round — the exact figure has not been given yet but it is estimated to be around 1.5m — confirmed how disinterested the French are with the Socialist primary, as the stakes are quite low. The polls are showing that the Socialist candidate would not make the second round of the presidential election and would actually finish fifth behind the far right leader Marine Le Pen, the conservative candidate Francois Fillon, the independent Emmanuel Macron and the far left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon.
Only the diehard left-wing voters came out to vote on Sunday in what will probably turn out to be more of a vote to determine the future of the Socialist party than the future of the country. The French left has never had a New Labour moment. Hollande and Valls tried over the last few years to impose a centre-left, economically liberal agenda, but failed to obtain convincing results and popular support. Valls, who had no choice but to defend his and Hollande’s record in office, clearly paid yesterday for being a pro-government candidate.
With Hamon and Montebourg gaining over half of the votes and campaigning on issues which would not have looked out of place in Mitterrand’s 1981 presidential manifesto, it seems as if things have gone back to square one for the Socialist party.
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