No one wants François Hollande to return as president of France

An amusement of the French presidential election system – and, sometimes, if you didn’t laugh, you would cry – is the ragtag and bobtail who put themselves forward as candidates, all but two of whom are eliminated in the first round.

Earlier in the Fifth Republic the casualties would be those from obscure fringe parties.

However, one of the great changes in French politics in the last 15 years, notably since Emmanuel Macron invented his own centrist party in 2016 and steamed through to win the 2017 election – is how the big boys of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries have been driven to the margins.

The collapse of the mainstream parties

In the first round of the 2022 election, Valérie Pécresse, the candidate for what used to be the mainstream conservative party, Les Républicains, gained just 4.78% of the vote, behind the maverick right-winger Eric Zemmour (7.07%) and way behind the main flag bearer of the right, Marine Le Pen, with 23.15%.

Even more pitiful was the performance of the Parti Socialiste, which had returned a president (François Hollande) as recently as 2012 and was the main party of the left.

Its candidate, the polarising Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, managed a dismal 1.75% of the vote. She was not even in sight of the main leftist candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who ran on behalf of his neo-marxist party La France Insoumise and picked up 21.95%.

With the man who came top, Mr Macron, scoring 27.85% and not on the ballot for next year, one can see how well founded the fears are that the second round in 2027 will be between Ms Le Pen and Mr Mélenchon.

The decline of the old mainstream parties is another sign – coming after the 2024 legislative elections and the disaster they represented for Mr Macron – of the cynicism and, indeed, disgust with which many in the French electorate regard their politicians.

In 2017 there was such dissatisfaction with the incumbent Parti Socialiste (PS) president, Mr Hollande, that he chose not to even enter his party’s primary. The man who went on to represent the party, Benoît Hamon, took only 6.36% of the first round vote, roughly a third of that registered by Mr Mélenchon.

Since then, compounded by the Hidalgo debacle, the PS has, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist.

The decline on the centre-right has been even worse.

In 2017 François Fillon came third with 20.01% of the vote, and but for an outbreak of scandal at the height of his campaign (when he was found to have corruptly employed his wife and children on the public payroll) he might have made it to the last two.

Now the chances of Les Républicains making it even into the top four are questionable.

Hollande considers a comeback

Such French people as can be bothered to vote – just under 72% of them turned out in 2022 for the runoff, and it would be a brave man or woman who betted on a higher figure next year – are, according to the polls, favouring one extreme or another, in the hope of radical change.

So it is an exceptionally courageous move for one of the main victims of 2017, Mr Hollande, to be dropping heavy hints that he plans to launch his own campaign for 2027.

Mind you, the hints have been dropped since the spring, and nothing has happened – yet.

Chums of Mr Hollande – known as ‘Monsieur Flanby’ when he had his disastrous term in the Elysée, after a popular caramel custard dessert – say that he hopes to present himself to the electorate as the voice of sweet, moderate reason, imploring them to vote for him rather than throwing France to the wolves of the hard right or hard left.

It displays a level of delusion excessive even by contemporary political standards.

In office, Mr Hollande had an approval rating of 4% – the lowest ever recorded for a sitting French president.

Could Hollande find a route through the middle?

However, political commentators seem to agree that Mr Hollande is more a figure of fun than an object of loathing, something his advocates seem to take as a positive sign.

It may also be an advantage that it is 10 years since he left office, and a whole new generation has been enfranchised who simply never saw, or cannot remember, how utterly dismal he was.

It seems he has yet to declare his candidacy because he is waiting for some of the centrist mediocrities who are starting to crowd the field to withdraw or be seen to fail.

There is every chance of that.

It is also far from clear where the Macronist fan base is going to go.

They will almost certainly not go to Mr Mélenchon, who is deemed likely to destroy the capitalist world they regard as so central to what passes for their prosperity.

And nor probably to Ms Le Pen, who despite having cleaned up her act is still regarded by many as bearing the taint of her late father and his overtly racist ideas.

So it is just conceivable that Mr Hollande, possibly fighting under a label that is not the Parti Socialiste, could come through the middle.

However, it is much more likely that he will not.

The odds against a Hollande comeback

The Le Pen family, fractured for years, has come back together around its candidate, and Jordan Bardella is back in his box.

The left is entrenched around Mr Mélenchon.

The moderates will look for someone for whom to vote, but that person may well not make the second round.

And that person, given all that has gone before, is highly unlikely to be François Hollande.