Anne Hidalgo emerges as a possible rival of Macron in the fight for the Elysee

Anne Hidalgo and the mayor of Mérida, Antonio Rodríguez Osuna, during a visit by the latter to Paris, on the 18th MOHAMMED BADRA / EFE

The name of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, sounds more and more insistently as a possible rival of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in the elections of 2022. If she won, she would become the first woman to occupy the head of state and the first born abroad.

A good result would mean that the moderate and social democratic left is still alive in France.

Hidalgo has not declared herself a candidate nor is it foreseeable that she will do so until the end of the summer.

But today it is the best placed socialist policy to resuscitate his party and opt for the Elysee Palace.

"This is not the moment, nor the issue," said Hidalgo (San Fernando, Cádiz, 1959) last November in an interview on the BFM-TV network.

But he added: “If it can be useful for my political family and for the country, so that there are alternatives ... I do not want us to enter the 2022 election without alternatives and telling ourselves that the three candidates already know them.

There is a risk of democratic collision ”.

Hidalgo was referring to the two candidates who have already declared their willingness to run for the next presidential elections - the head of the extreme right, Marine Le Pen, and the leader of the populist left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon - and President Macron.

Macron has not made his candidacy official.

It says that nothing is to be taken for granted.

But it would be a surprise if he did not seek re-election.

With the aforementioned candidates, France would once again undertake, as in 2017, a second round between Macron and Le Pen, or even between Le Pen and Mélenchon.

The risk, for the mayor of Paris, would be that the moderate and pro-European left - the fringe that encompasses the social democrats and the environmentalists - lacks a candidate with options.

According to this argument, there is a broad ideological space that the disintegration of the Socialist Party (PS) and the division into groups and small groups has left empty, without a leader or alternative government.

These are voters who do not identify with the populist Mélenchon, nor with Macron, whom many of them voted in 2017 when they saw him as a liberal socialist, but from whom they have distanced themselves due to his center-right policies.

“President Macron has freed a new political space on the left by orienting his government to the right, especially after the ministerial reshuffle [last July].

So the left must equip itself with the necessary organization to occupy this space ”, said in October the socialist François Hollande, president of the Republic between 2012 and 2017, during a conversation with various media, including EL PAÍS.

Hollande argued that the Covid-19 crisis demonstrated the validity of "the recipes of social democracy," a current in crisis.

And he cited, among these recipes that rulers of all colors apply today, "the role of the protective State, the recognition of public services, the use of partial activity to avoid layoffs, the call for broader solidarity."

"The left must claim more responsibility for this turnaround," said the former president.

And he added: “The Socialist Party must evolve.

It must become a broader political movement ...

He must be bold with his proposals and his incarnation to create a dynamic around him ”.

Talking about the candidacy - some mention Hollande's own, and he lets himself be loved - is "premature and inopportune."

“The priority”, he clarified, “are the ideas and the project.

The figure will be revealed at the end ”.

More power and public projection

Hidalgo, who was re-elected mayor in the municipal elections last June, is the most powerful figure in the PS and with the greatest public projection.

In a coalition with ecologists and communists, he has made Paris a green showcase for the climatic emergency and the post-covid-19 world: a municipalist synthesis of social democracy with environmentalism.

In debates such as the management of the pandemic, he has distanced himself from the Government, and has also distinguished himself from a part of the left in his defense of secularism in the face of the Islamist threat.

“The Hidalgo machinery starts up”, the newspaper

Le Monde

titled a few days ago

a chronicle that explained how the mayor prepares the ground for, at the right time, entering the race if she sees herself in a position to be between the two more voted in the first round and thus move on to the second and opt for victory.

Le Monde

sums up its strategy in four points.

One, leave Paris to undo her image as a candidate for the capital.

Two, make herself heard in matters of national politics by underlining what differentiates her from both Macron and Mélenchon, and highlighting her biographical profile as a daughter of immigration and the working class.

Three, create support networks with leaders in real France.

And four, to forge agreements with other forces of the non-populist left, and of environmentalism.

“The PS has no other candidate and she is the only candidate who can bring together the entire party.

Also, you feel like it.

Maybe not much, but a little bit.

And her husband [former Socialist MP Jean-Marc Germain] pushes her to do it.

The polls are not very good, but not bad either, "says political scientist Gérard Grunberg, a specialist in the history of French socialism.

The condition to maintain these perspectives would be a candidacy that encompasses other forces and sensitivities beyond the PS.

"What could stop it," he adds, "is that within six months there will be polls that show that it cannot go to the second round."

Hidalgo will not decide, predictably, until September.

In a book about the latest municipal campaign in Paris, journalist Saverie Rojek revealed that, before Hidalgo revalidated her term as mayor, Macron took her very seriously.

"If Paris wins," she said, "she could be a scary candidate in the presidential elections."

Division threatens the left

Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris, would need to lead a candidacy that went beyond her party and included environmentalists and other currents to have a chance of qualifying for the second round.

Otherwise, his chances would be greatly reduced, like any other candidate on the left.

A Harris Institute poll published on Sunday indicates that Hidalgo would obtain just a discreet 6% or 7% of votes, below the environmental candidate if he were Yannick Jadot MEP, and also below the leader of the radical left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who would get 10 or 11% of the vote.

The same poll puts Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron in the first round.

The context of pandemic and recession, added to the regional elections scheduled for June and already postponed once for health reasons, complicates the calculations.

Hidalgo's first hurdle is division in his own field.

Other former socialists, such as 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, former Justice Minister Christiane Taubira and another former minister, Arnaud Montebourg, more or less openly flirt with the idea of ​​being candidates.

But the biggest problem for the mayor may be the environmentalists, who feel strong after conquering some of the main French cities in the last municipal ones, and will not easily give up the baton of a red-green candidacy to a socialist one.

72% of left-wing supporters would like a joint candidacy, including from Mélenchon the center-left Social Democrat, according to a poll published in November by the Ifop institute.

This option seems unrealistic, given the gulf that separates La Francia Insoumisa, Mélenchon's party, from the socialists on issues such as the European Union, Islamism and secularism, or the free market economy.

The poll pointed to Taubira as the favorite candidate of the left-wing sympathizers in this hypothetical unity candidacy, with 53% of support.

Hidalgo was second with 52%.