French Socialist Candidates Unveil Last-Chance Platforms Ahead of Primary

Polls haven’t been kind to the French Socialist party of late. Approval ratings for François Hollande, France’s Socialist president, dipped to a measly 4 percent in November. More recent opinion polls for the upcoming presidential election, due to begin April 23, suggest a Socialist candidate might be relegated to fourth or fifth place in the first round of voting.

But never mind the gloomy outlook. Seven Socialist candidates are making a go of it in the second-ever French Socialist party primary, scheduled for Jan. 22 and 29.

On Tuesday, front-runner Manuel Valls and former education minister (one of two in the race) Vincent Peillon unveiled their respective presidential platforms.

Apparently refreshed from the holidays, Valls and Peillon each promised new economic programs that would still retain the social benefits the French hold so dear. Valls suggested a “decent income” to replace disparate French welfare benefits. Peillon promised to rework the labor law, without removing it, and to introduce a “tax shield for the most modest.”

Both supporters of the European Union, each still made obligatory noises of dissatisfaction, calling to reframe France’s relationship with Brussels. Valls promised to keep the national deficit below the EU-mandated 3 percent, but not to try to push it to zero, and said EU fiscal policy should be applied “smartly” (a dig at austerity policies that impose budget cuts). Peillon said he wants to pause EU enlargement, institute a European border guard, and revive “a new European deal.”

Not to be outdone, another main candidate, Arnaud Montebourg, planned a press conference for Wednesday to clarify his own positions. Montebourg, who resigned as economy minister in protest of Hollande’s pro-business stance in 2014, favors protectionist and anti-globalization policies. Other less-likely contenders include former education minister Benoît Hamon and former housing minister Sylvia Pinel.

The Socialist primary is the next step in a campaign that will likely pit a mainstream candidate against France’s far-right National Front party leader Marine Le Pen after a first round of voting culls the field. Few expect the eventual Socialist candidate to make it through the first round after Hollande failed to deliver on his campaign promises and declined to run for a second term.

Manuel Lafont Rapnouil, director of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the Socialist candidates are playing a long-term game in the primary. “Their direct interest is not to win the election; it’s rather to run to be the leading figure for what is going to happen after the election,” he told Foreign Policy on Tuesday.

Lafont Rapnouil said the Socialist party isn’t just hobbled in 2017 by low approval ratings. It’s also fragmented by threats from both sides of the political spectrum: On the center-left, Emmanuel Macron, Hollande’s erstwhile economy minister, has launched an independent bid for president under the banner “En Marche!” Young and tech-savvy, Macron promises a centrist political policy with common-sense liberal market reforms aimed at helping the young.

On the other side, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the founder of the Left Party, may draw away voters with more extreme leftist tendencies.

But Andrea Montanino, director of the Global Business and Economics Program at the Atlantic Council, doesn’t exclude the possibility of a Socialist candidate making it to the second round of elections, once his or her positions are clarified. After all, he said, center-right candidate François Fillon was once seen as a long shot in the Republican primary, but then he won the runoff with 66 percent of the vote.

And though Fillon has been set up as the main challenger to an eventual runoff with Le Pen, Montanino said the Socialists might actually have more luck siphoning off National Front voters if they can hit the right message and burnish their leftist credentials, instead of pushing for the liberal-market policies Valls has favored in the past.

While Le Pen’s platform focuses on identity politics, like border control and tamping down immigration from Muslim countries, she’s careful to protect France’s entrenched welfare benefits, preferring not to confront her voters with pension or retirement reforms. In contrast, Fillon promises budget cuts, clipping unemployment benefits, and raising the retirement age – all potential problems for working class voters.

“Many who vote for Le Pen in France in a way would like to have a very leftist platform,” Montanino said, pointing to policies like a minimum income, or big public investments that flout EU financial rules.

“I do not think that Fillon’s policies can really attract a lot of people. People are angry in France, the unemployment rate is still very high, and of course there are terrorism issues,” he said. The challenge for the Socialists, he said, is to rework populist and strongly-leftist rhetoric into their platform, instead of an approach that favors deregulation.

But is the current front-runner Valls, a very-recently resigned prime minister from the Hollande government, up to the challenge?

He may have only the slimmest of chances, but Montanino suggested watching Valls’ messaging in the coming weeks.

“Do not expect to interpret the future looking at the past,” he said. “And as we’ve seen with the American election, it matters how you talk more than what you say.”

Photo credit: ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/Getty Images