At Le Maraîcher, a small bar just a stone’s throw from the Divan, a famous Parisian bookstore, two friends, in their sixties, are eyeing our copy of François Hollande’s latest book. One of them deciphers the title: The challenge of governing, the left and power from the Dreyfus affair to the present day.* And adds: “Well, another book! Is it about his five-year term? Is he coming back? Candidate in 2027, I imagine?” A few steps away, the former President of the Republic is signing his latest book to the hundred or so people who have come to the meeting. He answers the same questions about the dissolution, his predecessor Emmanuel Macron, his future (to both of them), the left, the Socialist Party, Bernard Cazeneuve and the new Prime Minister, appointed a little earlier this Friday, September 6, Michel Barnier – “I know him well, and you won’t be surprised: he’s right-wing!” Could one have dreamed of a more opportune political-literary promotion?
A book by François Hollande is never insignificant. This one is even less so. We knew him as first secretary of the Socialist Party, deputy, president of the Republic, deputy again (of the New Popular Front), and now he is a historian. The former head of state immersed himself for over a year in the history of the left and he recounts its glory days and glorious heralds, far from the romanticism that so many others on the left before him have narrated. Throughout the pages, there is one single question: what is this evil that has been eating away at the socialist camp since its early days in the 19th century, this refrain that always bothers it? To be or not to be, in short. How many times has the Socialist Party been faced with the eternal choice of the challenge of governing? The challenge of power, which attracts the left as much as it repels it. Reform or revolution? How far should reform go? How far should revolution go? Communists against socialists in 1921, socialists and radicals under the Cartel of the Left three years later, supporting Pierre Mendès France or not, Mitterrandists against Rocardians, rebels against Dutch and now: socialists against rebels.
This has been the case since the left has been left, it considers that power “sullies”, “betrays”, because it is necessarily subject to accommodations, to arbitrations with the “bourgeoisie”. Its most radical fringes make programmatic purity essential. “The maximalism of a certain left, yesterday that of Guesde, then of the communists and today that of Mélenchon, actually reflects a refusal to exercise power, explains Hollande. Each time that the socialists have been dominant on the left, victories have been made possible and major advances have been made that have profoundly transformed our country.” Emmanuel Macron’s weeks of procrastination before appointing a Prime Minister and the intransigence of the New Popular Front, from which Jean-Luc Mélenchon demanded “the program, the whole program, nothing but the program”, are only yet another episode in this hesitation waltz.
“Emmanuel Macron considered that appointing Cazeneuve would be a way of renewing the thread of my five-year term.”
Purity as a religion erases many memories, as Hollande says when talking about the Popular Front. We remember the first year, 1936, and the major social reforms, less so the following ones. “The left prefers to omit the next two during which Camille Chautemps [NDLR : président radical du Conseil] multiplies concessions to the bosses”, reports the former tenant of the Elysée. Another time, another union. It too is sacred, and today more than yesterday. That of the NFP cannot be broken on the altar of Matignon. It is in the name of union that the socialists dismissed their former comrade (and minister) Bernard Cazeneuve – whom Emmanuel Macron pretended to want to make his Prime Minister. The rebels and the ecologists dragged him on the hurdle of infamy even before the person concerned had said what he would do with the NFP program. The PS could therefore not allow itself to support him openly, ruling out unconditional support for a government led by the former socialist without risking leaving “the union club”. “Posting the censorship of a man of the left as a hypothesis, that was the anomaly”, says François Hollande, as a response to Faure evoking Cazeneuve. He assured Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée on September 2 that he was “certain that Cazeneuve would have the support of a majority of socialists.” He is still convinced that his former Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior “would have been a cohabitant,” the “best placed” because he was not from the NFP, but that the latter would have tolerated him, the socialists first and foremost, as well as the Renaissance deputies and “a few people from the reasonable right.” He delivers his autopsy of the sequence: “It was above all Emmanuel Macron who did not want him. He must have considered that appointing him would have meant admitting to reconnecting with the thread of my five-year term.”
Turning the page Lucie Castets
François Hollande, a counter of the left’s finest hours, an observer of the twists and turns of the Socialist Party, an analyst of the backstage of power. We could almost forget that he has just been elected MP for Corrèze under the banner of the New Popular Front. What will he do there? “Don’t think that he is content to remain wisely on his red, hushed seat, he has many other plans,” his friends euphemize. The turmoil of the last two months has put him back on the political horse, the one he did before becoming president. If Bernard Cazeneuve had been appointed Prime Minister, he could have applied for a post as Minister of Foreign Affairs, some of his visitors believe; the evil tongues in the PS now say that he would accept the Quai d’Orsay even under Michel Barnier – he replies that he will vote for censure. In Olivier Faure’s entourage, it is even believed that the former president has greater ambitions: “His plan is quite simple: like others, he is looking for Emmanuel Macron to resign and an early presidential election: he wants the NFP to do the dirty work, to appear as the candidate for peace on the left behind.” Career plans that the person concerned dismisses with a wave of the hand: “I am attached to institutions and stability. I will not participate in procedures or street movements aimed at interrupting the mandate of the head of state.”
Can he? “By opening a dialogue with the RN to obtain assurances that they will not censor Michel Barnier, Macron is showing little regard for the republican front that he had nevertheless requested between the two rounds of the legislative elections. If Barnier were to be overthrown, it is this approach that would be condemned,” Hollande judges. Then the Cazeneuve card will return, because, he says, “we must close the page” on Lucie Castets. “I regret that she was unable to present her program before the Assembly, even if censorship, due to a lack of compromise with the central bloc, was hardly in doubt.” The same eternal debates will arise again between two lefts that he does not believe are “irreconcilable”. One wants to govern, the other does not. “I demand unity but on condition that a credible and open line is imposed. LFI is a minority within the left and its leader is more of a burden than a hope. The socialists must make themselves heard more on their proposals and their record”, unravels François Hollande, who intends to take part in the next socialist congress in 2025. Hollande is back more than ever. Had he really left?
* The Challenge of Governing. The Left and Power from the Dreyfus Affair to the Present Day. Perrin, 416 pages.
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