The disarray of the French left underscores how the campaign for the presidency ahead of April’s election will be fought and won on the right.
Barely five years since François Hollande bowed out as France’s socialist head of state, the party’s candidate Anne Hidalgo has sunk to as low as 3 per cent in one recent opinion poll. Hidalgo’s last-ditch appeal for the multiple left-of-centre contenders to submit to a primary contest has so far been rejected by most of them.