President of the Republic from 2012 to 2017, François Hollande is not surprised at the base of confidence that Emmanuel Macron currently enjoys.
"
It is not he who bears the responsibility but his competitors who do not present convincing offers
," he confides as a first scratch, in a long interview with the Parisian posted on Tuesday evening.
This interview opens a media sequence of presentation of his new book
Affronter
, published Wednesday by Stock.
It will be followed by a signature tour across France from the end of this week.
To discover
Presidential 2022: where are the candidates in the polls?
His resentment towards his former minister is intact.
“
Elected under exceptional circumstances
,” says François Hollande, “
he should have worked to reconcile the French.
Instead of working on it, he concentrated power, neglected Parliament and the social partners.
The appeasement was not there
”.
As for the record, to hear it, nothing works.
“
Nothing has been done on decentralization, energy policy, the revitalization of the most fragile areas.
It is a succession of States General, without ever a revolution.
"
On the left, "battles as picrocholine as they are microscopic"
"
The big parties, on the right as on the left, which were intended to enlighten the French, have finally abandoned them
", he observes also harshly. The PS? "
He was in excuse and effacement rather than in affirmation and proposition
." Candidates from the left? All of them “
are Lilliputian. They engage in battles as microcholine as they are microscopic.
"His former minister Arnaud Montebourg? "
If he came with his program to the European Council as president, he would quickly appear like a zozo
".
In his book, read by
Le Figaro
, the former president stands as the guarantor of French socialism while the entire left seems to be sinking.
In the interview with the
Parisian
, François Hollande also takes his “
share of responsibility
” for this collapse.
"
I led France, with successes but also failures,
" he said without dwelling on the results of his mandate having been the subject of a previous book.
Hidalgo?
"The campaign has not really started"
Asked about the low scores in the polls of the PS candidate Anne Hidalgo, François Hollande considers that less than six months from the deadline, "
the campaign has not really started
". “
The next few weeks will be decisive
”. Its first measure on the doubling of teachers' salaries "
deserves to be reworked
". He gives him advice: "
Not to address this or that category but to all French people, by presenting a global project
". With a conviction: "
social democracy is the only approach capable of combining redistribution and ecology, progress and Nature
".
The ecologists, very largely crushed in his book, also take it for their rank, as moreover those who would still imagine a possible rapprochement with their candidate, Yannick Jadot.
"
There are, of course,
" he told the Parisian, "
convergences between environmentalists and socialists, especially on the climate emergency, but there are also serious differences on growth, work, nuclear power and sovereign issues .
"
"The whole left risks marginalization
"
The whole left risks marginalization if it does not manage to be in the second round,
" he said without closing all doors to victory. On condition that it ceases "
to camp marginally in the opposition
". As always, leaving the doubt of a return to business since his departure from the Elysee Palace in 2017, François Hollande replies that he has “
already been president
” and that he “does
not need to nurture this ambition
”. “
I'm not looking for anything for myself. I have no revenge to take
", he assures before indicating:"
There is a candidacy today for the Socialist Party and it is that of Anne Hidalgo
". Tomorrow is another day.
