France’s former premier Manuel Valls, relegated to underdog in the race for the Socialists’ presidential nomination, is banking on his record as a reform-minded pragmatist to win Sunday’s primary run-off.
The square-jawed Valls, 54, cuts a stern figure next to his boyish rival Benoit Hamon, the standard-bearer of the party’s left flank who sped past him in the first round of the party primary on Sunday.
Valls cast former education minister Hamon, 49, as a dreamer who could never hope to become president, ignoring polls that show neither man making it past the first round in April.
Forecasts currently show rightwing candidate Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front (FN), best placed to contest the runoff vote in May.
An undeterred Valls said Socialist voters faced a choice between « certain defeat » with Hamon as their nominee and « possible victory » if they chose him.
He has been particularly scathing of his rival’s signature proposal for a universal basic income.
« I want nothing of these mirages that evaporate in an instant and that sow disillusionment (and) bitterness, » the Spanish-born Valls, who also previously served as interior minister, told a campaign rally.
A lover of boxing and football, Valls summoned all his pugnacity this week to try reclaim the upper hand.
« It’s not enough to make people dream, you need to be credible, » he told Hamon in a TV debate on Wednesday.
Hamon has, for his part, accused Valls of peddling « solutions that did not work yesterday and will not work tomorrow. »
– Pro-business –
Hamon resigned as education minister in 2014 after joining a rebellion against what he saw as the Socialist government’s drift to the right under Valls and the deeply unpopular President Francois Hollande.
Valls makes no apologies for his pro-business stance and desire to modernise the Socialist Party.
But his use of decrees to ram through contested labour reforms as prime minister, as well as a failed proposal to strip dual-national terrorists of their French citizenship, alienated many in the party.
Valls stepped down and threw his hat in the ring in December after Hollande ruled out a re-election bid following a single term beset by high unemployment, mass demonstrations and terror attacks.
An already daunting task for Valls has been made even harder by the success of Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old former economy minister under Hollande who has created a buzz on the campaign trail.
Valls has never disguised his contempt for the telegenic Macron, clashing with him repeatedly when they were cabinet colleagues.
The former PM’s parents, a Spanish painter father and Swiss-Italian mother, fled the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain to settle in France, though they travelled back to Barcelona for his birth in August 1962. He gained French citizenship when he was 20.
Valls has four children from his first marriage to a teacher. In 2010 he remarried, to concert violinist Anne Gravoin.
Unlike many members of the French political elite, the lifelong Barcelona football fan did not attend the prestigious ENA school of administration, studying history instead.
He cut his teeth working as an aide to former Socialist prime ministers Michel Rocard and Lionel Jospin.
In 2001, he became mayor of the tough high-immigration Paris suburb of Evry and was elected to the National Assembly a year later.
His experience in Evry has informed his views of France’s notoriously rough suburbs, saying those who live there suffer « apartheid ».
