Ex-French PM set on joining Macron
INCOMING French president Emmanuel Macron was starting to build his centrist government yesterday, with his former Socialist boss jockeying for position in a radically changed political landscape.
Macron, 39, was elected France’s youngest ever president on Sunday, crushing far-right leader Marine le Pen after a bruising campaign that left France’s traditional parties by the wayside.
He faces a huge task to unite a fractured, anxious country and to win a parliamentary majority in June’s general election, without which he could struggle to implement his ambitious reform agenda.
His victory at the head of a year-old proEU movement that has presented itself as a home for progressives of all stripes, has blown up France’s long-standing left-right political divide.
Yesterday, former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls – a failed candidate for his party’s presidential nomination – said he wanted to run for parliament on Macron’s ticket.
“The Socialist Party is dead, it is behind us,” Valls, prime minister from 2014 to last year when Macron was economy minister, said.
“I will be candidate for the presidential majority and I wish to join the list [of candidates] of his movement,” Valls said, while insisting that he remained a socialist.
Macron’s newly renamed “Republique en Marche” (the Republic on the Move) movement reacted warily to the announcement.
Macron’s campaign spokesman, Christophe Castaner, said Valls had a good chance of being accepted into the fold but had to submit an application.
Macron, a relative newcomer with just three years’ experience in frontline politics, has promised to rejuvenate France’s jaded governing class.
He has said that half of his candidates for the 577 seats in the National Assembly would be new to politics.
France’s next leader, who will be inaugurated on Sunday, taking over from Socialist President Francois Hollande, has yet to name his prime minister.
The former investment banker’s victory over Le Pen has been hailed as the strongest sign that populism may be peaking in Europe after setbacks for nationalists in the Netherlands and Austria.
But his rival’s historic score of 33.9% , or 10.6 million votes, showed it to be a formidable force that has tapped into acute fears over immigration, national identity and globalisation.