WITH LESS than two weeks to go before nominations open for the French Socialist party’s presidential primary, the battle to lay claim to the centre ground once occupied by Dominique Strauss-Kahn is in full swing.
The arrest of the former head of the International Monetary Fund in New York, and his subsequent withdrawal from the primary contest he was the favourite to win, has opened the race and thrust the remaining candidates into a fight for the ideological territory now up for grabs.
François Hollande, the party’s former leader, has been transformed from an unfancied outsider to frontrunner, though opinion polls this week showed that Martine Aubry, the current leader, is closing the gap.
According to the latest Ifop survey, Hollande leads Aubry by 36 per cent to 35 per cent among left-wing voters, while their approval ratings are almost identical, at 54 per cent and 53 per cent respectively.
Nominations for the primary open on June 28th and close on July 13th, with two rounds of voting – open to all registered left-wing voters – due to take place in the autumn.
For Hollande, Strauss-Kahn’s withdrawal was a mixed blessing. It enhanced his prospects, but it also left his strategy in shreds.
With Strauss-Kahn commanding greater support on the party’s centre ground (Hollande’s natural base), the former party leader had built a strategy aimed at differentiating himself from “DSK”.
He stressed his credentials on social issues – considered a Strauss-Kahn weakness – and pitched himself as un président normal, who was close to ordinary people’s preoccupations – a clear attempt to remind the public of Strauss-Kahn’s (and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s) extravagant lifestyle and flashy social circle. The front-page photo accompanying a recent interview for Le Parisien was of Hollande arriving on his scooter.
“I’m not changing the rhythm of my campaign method with the circumstances. I’m trying to keep to the direction I have set,” Hollande said last week.
The past fortnight has brought a marked shift in his language towards the centre ground, however.
In an opinion piece in Le Monde, he set out a vision of a state in which "social democracy and political democracy" were reconciled in the common interest.
He would seek to insert in the constitution new rules on negotiations between employers and their staff.
“The state must remain the guarantor of national cohesion and the social-public order, but it has nothing to fear about giving a greater place to the [social] partners in setting down and elaborating social norms,” he wrote.
He stressed the importance of supporting small- and medium-sized companies, and said new structures for dialogue between the state and social partners would make for “a more balanced and more responsible” relationship.
The Le Mondearticle spoke at once to the social democratic wing of the Socialist party and to those further left who are expected to turn out in big numbers in the primary.
It was in keeping with Hollande’s recent interventions.
On nuclear power, he suggested a middle way, neither scrapping the industry, as some on the left desire, nor expanding it, as others would prefer, but calling for a reduction in the role of atomic energy in electricity generation, from 75 per cent today to 50 per cent in 2025.
He has called for a national investment bank, tax reform to boost public finances and temporary price freezes to regulate sudden rises in sectors such as food.
His plan for the 2012 election would be informed by “reality-based socialism”, he said.
Hollande has changed his image recently by losing weight, wearing designer glasses and adopting a more aloof, statesmanlike manner.
He pitches himself as the heir of the socialist former prime minister Michel Rocard and the former president of the European Commission Jacques Delors (Aubry’s father).
His chances of winning over Strauss-Kahn’s supporters will become clearer over the next two weeks when two younger party figures who had been willing to stand aside for DSK – Manuel Valls and Pierre Moscovici – decide whether to run or not.
Aubry is expected to announce her candidacy soon, while Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s former partner and the mother of his four children, has already declared. Polls show public support for both women has been rising in recent weeks.