Manuel Valls dreams of redemption.
After his failure in the municipal elections in Barcelona in 2019, the former prime minister of François Hollande would like to find a role to play in France.
He knows that the road will be long: the former tenant of Matignon has disappointed many voters in recent years, especially those on the left.
It must be said that the finalist of the primary of the left in 2017 had refused to support the winner, Benoît Hamon, to finally join Emmanuel Macron - and then become a member of the majority.
"I did not realize that, having broken the promise not to support a candidate other than the one who won the primary, that was going to make me the traitor"
, he admitted on Monday morning on France Inter.
"I didn't want to die"
"It was quite natural for me to support Emmanuel Macron because I saw the fall of Benoît Hamon and what it could cause, that is to say a second round between François Fillon and Marine Le Pen"
, he tried to justify himself.
"But by breaking this word, I triggered something quite deep in the electorate of the left",
analyzed Manuel Valls.
More generally, the former prime minister considers that he has, through his candidacy for the primary,
"somehow embodied all the failures, rightly or wrongly - sometimes that could be unfair - of the five-year term of François Hollande "
, He judged, including his
" own responsibilities "
.
To hear him, the former prime minister would have experienced this episode as a tear.
Worse:
“I physically felt a form of death, physical decay, so I tried to rebel against it.
I didn't want to die, ”
he hammered.
This is why he presented himself, and narrowly won, the legislative election in his constituency of Essonne in 2017, then by trying his luck in the municipal elections in Barcelona, where he is from.
“I knew I couldn't be elected (mayor),”
he explained, admitting a
“mediocre result”
after winning just 13.20% of the vote.
Score which, however, according to him,
"prevented the city from falling into the hands of the separatists".
Islamism, secularism ... "There is a lack of voices, a message"
In his new book
Pas une gout de sang français
(Ed. Grasset), Manuel Valls explains that he wishes to return to the debate, to defend his favorite themes, such as secularism and the fight against Islamism.
“There is a lack of voices, a message, a deeply republican project that goes back to the sources of who we are.
There is no political offer around that ”,
he judged, judging however that Emmanuel Macron had
“ evolved ”
on these questions.
For the presidential election of 2022, Manuel Valls also judges
"interesting (e) the approach of Anne Hidalgo
", the mayor PS of Paris, "
around the Republic, democracy, ecological transition"
.
"I also find Xavier Bertrand's approach interesting,"
he added of the ex-LR president of Hauts-de-France, a probable candidate.