In the centre of Trappes, in Paris’s western suburbs, a group of young men are handing out flyers urging locals to vote for Benoît Hamon. Neither the name nor the face is familiar in Britain, but that could well be about to change today.
“Vote for this man and you will see the real France,” says one, thrusting a leaflet into my hand. It sounds more like a threat than a promise, but this rather gritty Parisian banlieue – the subject of several billion euros’ worth of regeneration investment – is Hamon’s home ground. One of seven candidates in the first round of the Socialist party’s (PS) primary election to choose a presidential candidateon Sunday, Hamon, 49, was considered an outsider only a fortnight ago, but is fast gaining ground. To some, he is the French Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn – albeit a considerably younger version. Hamon’s anti-capitalist programme includes a “universal wage” (a form of basic income), work sharing, the use of referendums to decide policy and the legalisation of cannabis. It has been dismissed as utopian by centrist critics, but that will not worry Hamon overly. This is about the socialist movement showing that it can do populism and protectionism better than the far right. France’s Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, is profiting from dissatisfaction among working-class voters who feel abandoned by both the left and the right. Hamon, his Socialist primary rival Arnaud Montebourg, 54, and the hard left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 65, who is standing “outside the frame of political parties”, all argue that the Socialist party has abandoned the working class by shifting to the centre ground. This is embodied by Manuel Valls, the former prime minister and another primary contestant – who once reportedly suggested dropping the word “Socialist” from the party’s name.
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