On the occasion of the late January primary, Socialist Party voters will have to decide. They will have to make the economic choices that the left failed to establish during its decade of opposition from 2002 to 2012 and that François Hollande couldn’t manage to share during his term.
The conditions of the renouncement by the head of state will not facilitate a calm debate either.
On the contrary, divisions have deepened between supporters of the president’s competitiveness policy, embodied by his responsibility pact, and dissenters who see tax cuts as unearned “gifts” to businesses and increased public spending as a benefit.
Endless debates on Keynesian stimulus and major fiscal reform have overshadowed emerging issues – the impact of digitization and automation, real equality, green growth, etc. – which remain unanswered.
The primary should theoretically be an opportunity to finally modernize the PS’s program, especially since the positions do not appear to be purely binary, with a candidate like Arnaud Montebourg supporting both supply-side policy and a break with the EU’s budgetary and trade rules.
Candidates must present well-structured and credible programs, backed by firm convictions, and the left-wing electorate must embrace them before making their choice, similar to the long process observed on the right.
There is a significant risk of witnessing score-settling (via the “anything but Valls” approach) at the end of a failed term rather than seeing the candidates project forward. A kind of destructive “congress-like primary.”
Another pitfall should not be underestimated: Emmanuel Macron’s decision to embark on a presidential venture with his own movement will likely skew the primary debates sharply to the left, at the risk of pushing the PS far from the realities of governance.
Moreover, with the candidacy of the leader of En Marche, the chances of the future Socialist candidate reaching the second round of the presidential election seem slim.
This is, in fact, Emmanuel Macron’s calculation for the future.
