Tales from the French Socialist Primary [part (?)]"It's not the socialist primary, it's the citizen primary of the beautiful popular alliance ( )"The "beautiful popular alliance" gave a nice illustration of just how shambolic the PS is by trying yet once again -unsuccessfully- to ask Mr Macron (independent center left candidate) and Mr Mélenchon (radical left) to participate in while refusing simultaneously to admit a few small candidates in (notably Pierre Larrouturou, french economist & politician) for being "interested too late in the process".
Dropped out : Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, french senator, who doesn't want to divide further the votes of the "radicals" for which there's already a competition between Mr Hamon and Mr Montebourg.
May be running : Sylvia Pinel for the Left Radical Party (PRG for the french short form). Radicals are not "radicals" as in "far left" but a small party carrying the name (with another, center right, Radical Party) of a formerly very popular form of Third Republic leftism. The PRG had been for a long time a subservient ally of the Socialist Party but this year they decided to nominate Miss Pinel as their candidate for the Presidency outside of the primary... but are now considering fielding her in the primary. Go figure. Probably got a stern lecture to know their place and play the game by the rules...
Going in : Vincent Peillon, former Minister of Education (2012-2014). Not too sure where he falls on the spectrum, to be honest (to the left of Valls, no doubt). That would be the fourth minister (!) of one of Hollande's cabinet to run in this primary and probably one (if not two) too many, gives the impression that Socialist "elephants" (as the apparatchiks are often called here) are all coming out of the woodwork.
Current expected count : 10-11 candidates.
Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls has a tough road ahead of him because he must now unite the party if he wants to win the primary, which is really not his strong point as up until now he was the "iconoclast social-liberal", one that once famously said there were "irreconcilable positions" within the French Left. Unfairly or not, he will have to assume the heritage of the governement he was a part of and there's already an independent candidate chasing his core electorate.