Feuding French Socialists leave presidential prospects in disarray

PARIS — Deep fissures in the French Socialist Party that hamstrung the movement during recent municipal elections now threaten to derail its hopes of winning the presidency in 2027.

The once-powerful faction is grappling with an identity crisis similar to that gripping left-of-center parties across Europe. But the warring blocs in Paris can’t even agree on the process of choosing a presidential candidate for next year, let alone who should run in a contest that, for now, the far right is tipped to win.

The feud has gotten so heated that the Socialists’ second-in-command, Boris Vallaud, publicly threatened to resign over the strategy dispute in an interview with Le Parisien published Tuesday, hours before a party meeting that one participant called “a little tense.”

“Staying silent when things aren’t going in the right direction does no one any favors,” Vallaud said.

The Socialist Party’s next steps will likely determine success or failure at the ballot box. Its middling performance in last month’s vote offered further proof it needs to choose whether it’s a moderate, center-left force that embraces compromise in the name of responsible governance, or an unabashedly progressive movement more aligned with the anti-capitalist party France Unbowed and its polarizing leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Should the Socialists continue to try to play it both ways, as they did during the municipal elections, they risk being squeezed into irrelevance between the centrists — whom they worked with to get a budget passed — and the hard left, with whom they formed partnerships in several local contests last month.

“The French can’t understand us,” said Rachid Temal, a Socialist senator. “On the budget, we took a responsible approach and worked with the [center-right] government. Then we turn around and work with France Unbowed.”

Look left, look right

The Socialists have been struggling to define a political line since former President François Hollande left office in 2017 with abysmal approval ratings.

To try to broaden the tent in the last two general elections, party leader Olivier Faure had his Socialists run alongside France Unbowed as part of a broad left-wing coalition.

But Mélenchon has in recent months courted a torrent of criticism over alleged antisemitic behavior and his unapologetic reaction to the death of a far-right activist, so the Socialists declared they were washing their hands of the 74-year-old firebrand ahead of last month’s vote.

It didn’t last.

In key cities where Socialist candidates underperformed in the first round, center-left candidates defied the wishes of their party leaders to form electoral pacts with France Unbowed.

Boris Vallaud (L) and Olivier Faure during a parliamentary debate on the 2026 budget at The National Assembly on October 31, 2025. | Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images

Center-left candidates ended up keeping city halls in Paris and Marseille, but across France the results were mixed for both the alliances and the Socialists themselves.

That didn’t stop Faure from trying on election night to frame the results as a series of “wonderful victories for Socialist mayors” that, looking ahead to 2027, put collective success “within our reach.”

Vallaud took a less sanguine tone.

“Even though the Socialists didn’t lose the municipal elections, we would be wrong to believe that we won them,” he told Le Parisien.

Family feud

Faure and Vallaud represent the two dueling visions of the Socialists’ future, and their divergent beliefs on how to choose a candidate for 2027 reflect that.

Faure wants to look left. He is gunning for a broad primary, save for France Unbowed, to select a single candidate for the 2027 presidential race among the Socialists, the Greens, the Communists and other left-wing parties. Supporters argue such a primary would maximize the chances of a left-wing candidate reaching the second round.

In the French presidential system, only two candidates qualify for the runoff, and many believe National Rally President Jordan Bardella’s strong poll numbers effectively guarantee him a spot in the final, even this early.

“There’s an illusion that we’re going to win by bringing people who have voted for Macron twice back into the fold, even though they haven’t supported the left for over a decade,” said a Faure-aligned parliamentarian who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal party dynamics. “It’s doomed to fail, whereas listening to the left population’s aspiration for unity could offer at least a shot at victory.”

Vallaud believes the party needs its own moderate candidate who can appeal to centrist voters, rather than joining a primary that could force them to support a more radical figure from outside their own party.

“The Greens, the Communists, [the conservative] Les Républicains will all have their internal candidate before the summer except for us,” said a close associate of Vallaud.

Vallaud seems to be in the majority at the moment, with many Socialists still fuming at Faure’s apparent flip-flop on working with France Unbowed last month.

“Faure now represents a minority of the party,” said one Socialist official aligned with Vallaud.

French far-right Rassemblement National party’s President Jordan Bardella greets supporters during a party rally following the results of the first round of France’s 2026 municipal elections. | Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images

With no consensus candidate and no settled strategy, time is running short.

A poll released Saturday showed Edouard Philippe, the center-right former prime minister, starting to separate himself from the rest of the pack and emerge as the most likely candidate to make the runoff alongside Bardella.

The left on the whole fared poorly in the survey. It showed a runoff featuring Mélenchon versus Bardella would see the France Unbowed leader crushed 28.5 percent to 71.5 percent, with a third of respondents saying they wouldn’t even cast a ballot in such a race.

Another likely candidate, the center-left MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, fares a bit better but is also on track to lose to Bardella by double digits if both were to feature in the second round.

The one scenario featuring Faure shows him netting just 4.5 percent of the vote. A Vallaud candidacy wasn’t even tested.

Anthony Lattier contributed to this report.