France needs programme to bring it back to itself – Presidential favourite

French Socialist lawmaker François Hollande was crowned favourite for next year’s Presidential election, winning the left’s primary to choose a challenger for Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Sarkozy, the right-wing incumbent, is all but certain to run for re-election, but recent opinion polls show him on course to lose, and Mr Hollande’s victory will serve as a springboard for his challenge.

“It’s a great victory for democracy,” Mr Hollande said, hailing not only his own success, but his party’s in organising France’s first ever US-style open primary, which he hopes has given him a convincing mandate.

“I want to re-enchant the French dream,” he said. “France needs a programme that will bring it back to itself. I want to be the candidate of respect and of dialogue, who brings a new definition to the Presidency.”

“Tonight, we rally behind our candidate,” Martine Aubry declared, welcoming her erstwhile opponent to the Socialist Party headquarters to celebrate his victory.

Segolene Royal, who is both Mr Hollande’s former partner and the Socialist’s defeated candidate in the 2007 election, said the win was both an “undeniable advance” and showed supporters’ “very strong trust” in the victor. Mr Hollande had the backing of the four defeated first-round candidates and entered the run-off as favourite, but Ms Aubry mounted a tough fight back, branding him a soft centrist without the steel to defeat Mr Sarkozy.

Ms Aubry, 61, the former labour minister who gave France its 35-hour working week, also attacked Mr Hollande’s lack of executive experience.

But 57-year-old Mr Hollande turned the attacks to his advantage, accusing Ms Aubry of undermining party unity and suggesting his lack of a track record would make it easier for him to run as a candidate of change.

“I understand the scale of the task ahead of me, it is heavy and serious. I need to match the expectations of the French citizens who can no longer bear the policies of Nicolas Sarkozy,” he said.

Mr Hollande promised to better regulate financial markets, fight unemployment and reduce the cost of health care and accommodation.

Mr Sarkozy’s camp was wrong-footed by the primary. Some of his supporters grudgingly admitted it served as a good shop window for the Socialists, but the President himself dismissed it as alien to French political tradition.

The majority UMP mocked the left’s policy debate, portraying it as a throwback to the 1980s, but the televised confrontations drew large audiences.

Ms Aubry succeeded Mr Hollande as Socialist Party general secretary and has since let it be known that she found the organisation in a sorry state.

Mr Hollande was the partner of fourth-placed challenger Royal for 30 years, raising four children with her. But he split from her secretly before her failed Presidential run to move in with his girlfriend.

Despite the bad blood, the campaign only turned truly bitter in the closing straight, when Ms Aubry attempted to close down Mr Hollande’s narrow but consistent lead by tacking to the left and branding him weak.

Historically, both she and Mr Hollande come from the party centre ground.

In 1995, when France’s last Socialist President François Mitterrand left office, they were both apostles of modernising former European Commission chairman Jacques Delors – Ms Aubry is his daughter, Mr Hollande his protégé.

Even before the result was confirmed, Jean-François Cope, leader of Sarkozy’s UMP, warned: “This evening we’ll have an opponent, and we’ll finally be able to demand some answers.”

As yesterday’s Le Figaro newspaper put it: “The problems for Francois Hollande start now.”