Hollande’s status sinks while Valls does dirty work

It had never happened in French politics: a president and prime minister from the same party, simultaneously breaking records for unpopularity and popularity, separated by at least 40 points in opinion polls.

President François Hollande's approval rating has been stuck at 17 to 18 per cent since before Christmas. But Manuel Valls, the former interior minister whom Hollande was forced to promote to prime minister, is soaring, with popularity in the 58 to 62 per cent range.

Valls is on the front page of every newspaper and magazine, and has been repeatedly interviewed by evening news anchors, while Hollande fades into the background. The logic of the institutions of the Fifth Republic has been reversed: France’s monarchical president is becoming a ceremonial figurehead; the prime minister – hitherto the president’s executor and “shock absorber” – seems to be ruling the nation.

In January, Hollande finally adopted the social-liberal, supply side economic philosophy that Valls has espoused for years. Valls loyally defends Hollande's policies in public. So the difference may be more of form than substance. Where Hollande equivocates, Valls speaks clearly. Hollande bored France; Valls has imparted a desperately needed frisson of dynamism.

Traditionally, a sitting French president is his party’s candidate for re-election. But less than two years into Hollande’s first term, more than three years before the 2017 election, there is talk of a socialist primary for the nomination.

Hollande wants to be re-elected. Valls wants to be president. Their identical ambition and opposite public images raise a huge question for the coming months and years. Hollande reportedly believes Valls will wear himself out at the prime minister’s office, while Valls thinks Hollande cannot regain lost popularity.

An opinion poll published by Le Figaro on April 16th was particularly humiliating for Hollande. If the 2017 election were held now, it showed, he would not make it to the run-off. If Hollande, the former president Nicolas Sarkozy and the leader of the extreme right-wing National Front were candidates (as they were in 2012), Sarkozy would win 29 per cent in the first round, Le Pen 25 per cent and Hollande only 19 per cent.

Humiliation
In another humiliation for Hollande, Valls this week reversed the president's stated intention to postpone – for the fifth time in a decade – France's compliance with the EU's 3 per cent ceiling on deficit spending.

Hollande announced on March 31st, the night he appointed Valls, that "the government will also have to convince Europe that France's contribution to competitiveness and growth must be taken account of with respect to its commitments." It was typical Hollande-speak, but the message was clear: France would not meet the 2015 deadline he'd negotiated. The pattern of broken promises finally met resistance in Brussels and Washington. Two of Hollande's closest advisers at the Élysée, Philippe Léglise-Costa and Emmanuel Macron, were shocked by the cold reception they received in Brussels on April 10th.

At the IMF spring meeting in Washington, Siim Kallas, the vice-president of the EU commission and acting commissioner for economic affairs, reportedly read the riot act to finance minister Michel Sapin.

The Hollande administration back-tracked. It fell to Valls to announce, during a trip to Berlin on April 14th, that “We will meet our commitment [to bring the deficit below 3 per cent in 2015] because France’s word and credibility are at stake.”

Balanced budget
No French government has presented a balanced budget for 40 years. Public expenditure represents 57 per cent of GDP, the record in Europe. On April 17th, Valls went some way to explaining how the government will cut €50 billion to meet EU criteria. The right said the plan was vague and did not constitute real reform. Socialist parliamentarians who'd been thrilled that there was, at last, "a pilot in the plane", realised they don't like the destination. They've denounced Valls's plan to cut €21 billion in social protection as "austerity" and allege it will kill growth.

Taken in conjunction with the €40 billion in tax breaks the Hollande administration promised businesses and disadvantaged families, the figures still don't add up. But as Le Monde 's front page noted, "one cannot deny the prime minister's determination to get started on the 'dirty work'."