After France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, announced he would not run for re-election, his party will seek to prove wrong the pollsters who say the French left is too weak to make it through to the final round of the presidential election next spring.
The final is currently tipped to be between the right’s François Fillon and the far-right’s Marine Le Pen.
The French Socialist party, alongside other associated micro-parties, will hold an open primary race to choose its presidential candidate on 22 and 29 January and candidates have until 15 December to declare. But other candidates from the across the left have already announced they will run independently.
Candidates from the hard-left to the centre-left could now include:
Manuel Valls
Hollande’s prime minister and once his most loyal ally, Manuel Valls, has not yet announced if he will run in the Socialist primary race. Tough on law and order and a pro-business reformist from the right of the Socialist party, the 54-year-old is a little more popular with the general public than Hollande, but he is at odds with some of the left. He took only 5% of the vote in the last Socialist primary race in 2011.
Arnaud Montebourg
Arnaud Montebourg has already declared he will run in the Socialist primary race. Hollande’s former economy minister is firmly on the left of the party and lost his cabinet position in 2014 after denouncing Hollande’s pro-business shift. The former lawyer, who after leaving government did a management course at business school, says he favours a strong state to protect France’s industry from “foreign interests”.
Benoît Hamon
The leftwing MP for Yveslines, outside Paris, has already declared to run in the Socialist primary race. Benoît Hanonserved twice as a minister under Hollande. But, as education minister, the 49-year-old quit the government in protest at pro-business reforms in 2014.
Emmanuel Macron
A rebellious former economy minister and former protege of Hollande, he has launched a maverick, outsider bid for the presidency, promising to lead a people’s “democratic revolution” against a “vacuous” political system. The former investment banker, 38, who was unknown to the French public until two years ago, is not a member of a political party and has never run for elected office. He describes himself as coming from the left but wants to unite the left and right on a centrist ticket.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon
The charismatic firebrand is running on a radical left ticket and last week won the backing of the Communist party. A one-time Trotskyist and former teacher, he spent 30 years in the Socialist party, where he served as a minister and was once the youngest ever senator. He quit in 2008, arguing the party wasn’t properly leftwing. A former Socialist minister, he has emerged as the tub-thumping philosopher-leader of the radical left. He won 11% of the vote in the first round of the 2012 presidential election.
Christiane Taubira
Christiane Taubira, Hollande’s former justice minister and a well-established political figure from Cayenne in French Guiana, hasn’t commented on whether or not she will run in the primary but a petition calling on her to do so currently has 70,000 signatures. The 64-year-old, who was an important voice on the left of Hollande’s government, quit after differences over his security measures after Paris’s terrorist attacks. As a minister, she often faced racist taunts from far-right sympathisers: at one rally, children waved bananas at her. A municipal election candidate for the far-right Front National was forced to withdraw in 2013 after likening her to a monkey on Facebook. She later told Libération that racist attacks “were an attack on the heart of the republic”.
