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In Sarkozy's Shadow

A Facelift for France's Socialists

By Stefan Simons

With the financial crisis continuing and the economy getting worse, France's Socialists have watched helplessly as President Nicolas Sarkozy occupies their political ground. Starting on Friday, the party plans to reinvent itself. But first it has to find a leader.

Benoît Hamon is a man in a hurry. He has hardly arrived in the stark auditorium in the center of the southwestern French city of Toulouse before quickly shaking the hands of the organizers and stepping onto the stage. The audience, mostly students, applauds in unison. The excited young socialists are joined by their graying comrades, including blue-collar workers from Airbus and union organizers at local pharmaceutical companies.

Hamon, wearing an elegant single-breasted suit that seems slightly out of place, appears uncharacteristically nervous, but his anxiety dissipates after a few sentences. Speaking in a staccato voice, the 41-year-old politician dissects the plight of the Fifth Republic: "Social plans, layoffs, loss of purchasing power, elimination of social programs -- we are heading for a social catastrophe that calls the entire system into question." He criticizes President Nicolas Sarkozy for his "brutal relentlessness," adding: "We are not on the verge of a revolt yet, but the crisis is coming."

Then Hamon lays out his vision for a transformed Socialist Party, one that will find its way back to blue-collar and white-collar workers and turn its back on the bloated machine of party luminaries. "We need a broad alliance, we need an opening," says Hamon. The audience cheers, almost as if US President-elect Barack Obama, a hero in France and the rest of Europe, were speaking in Toulouse.

Hamon, a member of the European Parliament, has hardly stopped speaking before heading off to the next in a string of engagements: speeches in Montpellier and Paris, visits to the picket lines in front of factories at risk of being shut down. He has been to dozens of such meetings in the last eight weeks, and so has the entire leadership of France's Socialist Party.

There are good reasons for all of this activity. At a convention in the northern city of Reims this weekend, a preliminary decision will be reached on a major reorientation of the party -- some even call it a historic shift -- in terms of platform and leadership. But many of the party's 233,000 members are skeptical.

The earlier alliance of blue-collar workers, white-collar workers and lower-level government employees has lost its status as the advance guard of France's leftists. The trauma of 2002, when Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin lost to right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen in a preliminary vote in the presidential elections, has been neither forgotten nor overcome. In addition, the party remains deeply divided over the subject of a European constitution. Although Socialists are in charge in most French cities and regions today, this is only small consolation for the fact that the party has lost three presidential elections in a row since 1995, the last being the one in which Ségolène Royal lost to Nicolas Sarkozy.

Ideologically trapped between the siren calls of the radical left and the liberal appeals of the "Democratic Movement" of centrist François Bayrou, the Socialists are in a deep identity crisis. Not even the financial crisis and ensuing economic downturn have awakened the party foot soldiers. In fact, Sarkozy has even managed to poach the slogans of the left. While the president considers the partial nationalization of banks, promises subsidized jobs and announces his plan to "reshape capitalism," the opposition is paralyzed, isolated and out of touch.

To make matters worse, because the party's center has grown silent, the heavyweights are taking every opportunity to draw attention to themselves. But instead of a clear course, the air has been filled with contradictory statements and proposals. "The comrades are fed up with constant strife," says one prominent Paris Socialist. "We must finally speak with one voice once again."

But with whose voice? Half a dozen party luminaries are already waiting in the wings to replace First Secretary François Hollande, 54. Although he has managed to hold together an increasingly divided party for 11 years, he has also watered down its image beyond recognition with his jovial, compromising approach.

Last week, party members were asked, in a preliminary decision, to vote on six main motions for the upcoming convention -- hulking ideological guides imprinted with the emblem of a fist and rose, and complicated enough to be puzzling to all but insiders.

All of the calls for solidarity and reform mask a brutal power struggle. Whoever is selected as the leader of the Socialist Party after the conclave in Reims will be partially responsible for choosing the Socialists' top candidate in the 2012 presidential election. This has allowed the current election to escalate into a conflict among the party's various wings and factions.

Benoît Hamon is also vying for the leadership slot, and his candidacy has shifted the tenor in the party clearly into the radical red spectrum. Hamon, who comes from a working-class background in Brittany, is seen as a charming but unpromising representative of the left wing of the Socialist Party. The son of a secretary and a dockworker from the port city of Brest was already involved in student protests at 19. After earning a university degree in history, Hamon briefly worked as a parliamentary assistant. Then he assumed the leadership of the Young Socialists, which had just established itself as an independent organization operating in concert with the parent party. He worked for a cabinet minister, became a member of the city council of a Paris suburb and, in 2004, a member of the European Parliament.

Hamon is valued for his pragmatism. He managed to bring together the Socialists' leftist elite into a "historic alliance." "He doesn't have that aura of suffering" that the party elders have, says one of his friends, explaining Hamon's success. "He just seems more optimistic."

Since last week, Hamon has had even more reason to be optimistic. Now that he has gained the support of almost 20 percent of party members with his draft proposal titled "Ahead of the World," he has suddenly advanced into the party's upper echelons. After being ridiculed as an archaic leftist until recently, Hamon now finds himself being taken seriously.

Even by Ségolène Royal. The former life partner of the outgoing First Secretary, Royal lost to Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election one-and-a-half years ago. After capturing the largest number of votes -- 29 percent -- with her draft proposal, she is reclaiming the leadership role within the party. But to capture a majority at the convention in Reims, Royal will need popular allies.

Royal has garnered the support of regional leaders and young talent, and she has also shed her former image. The "Madonna" of the 2007 presidential election no longer serves up her vague visions in debates, and she has also changed her gestures and wardrobe. Royal now favors jeans and tunic skirts, and teleprompters over podiums.

An alliance with her sharpest rival, Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, is not an option. After leading in the polls Delanoë, a representative of the establishment, has now managed to capture only about a quarter of party members' votes. A more likely candidate for an alliance would be Martine Aubry, 58, the mayor of the northern city of Lille. She represents the party's combative, pro-union tradition.

And then there is the surprise star and far left politician Benoît Hamon. He embodies both the shift in ideology within the party and generational change, as well as the notion of breaking ranks with the party machine and turning away from orthodoxy.

This is the same mix that Royal is now invoking. Last Friday, she assured supporters once again that she wanted to gather all available talent around her, including the new generation. But far left politician Hamon could prove to be a difficult negotiating partner for Royal. "We are willing to enter discussions with anyone. But we will not give up anything," says the man in the single-breasted suit.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan