French centre left must wage ‘existential battle’ to prevent far right winning presidency

The European lawmaker Raphaël Glucksmann has urged the French centre left to wage an “existential battle” to prevent Marine Le Pen’s far right winning the 2027 presidential election after he was chosen as the social democrat candidate for the presidency.

“We’ve got to rid our hearts of the spirit of defeat,” Glucksmann, the founder of the small party Place Publique, said on Monday morning after his decisive win in a centre-left primary race held by the Socialist party.

In his first interview since being designated a presidential candidate on Sunday night, Glucksmann told France Inter radio that the country was living in a “historic moment”, with the far right at the gates of power. He said the 2027 presidential election campaign would be brutal and “like no other we have ever experienced”. He said it would be unbearable to have a centre left “that doesn’t believe in victory”, adding that he could restore a “pride in social democracy”.

At present the centre left sits substantially behind the far right in the polls and also trails the radical left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is polling high but with whom Glucksmann refuses to work.

Glucksmann, 46, an essayist and intellectual who argues he is very different to career politicians, is staunchly pro-Europe and pro-Ukraine. His candidacy marks the first time the Socialist party will not have its own presidential candidate since the party was founded in 1969. The party suffered two crushing defeats in the last two presidential elections.

Glucksmann has been a member of the European parliament since 2019. He strikes a more reformist and centrist tone than the Socialist party, but has cooperated with it in the past, presenting joint electoral lists. He has made no secret of his presidential ambitions but needed the Socialist party machine behind him for his campaign.

Glucksman is polling at between 9% and 14%, well behind the frontrunner, Le Pen. He also trails the centre-right contender Édouard Philippe, who served as prime minister under Emmanuel Macron.

Crucially, he is also behind Mélenchon, whose party, La France Insoumise, boycotted the Socialist primary and has presented itself as the biggest force in a divided left.

Glucksmann is tasked with regaining centre-left voters who jumped ship to support Macron, though his critics on the left accuse him of being too centrist. He said the French president, who is standing down next spring, “wasted 10 years” failing to act on the climate emergency.

Glucksmann is known for being a campaigner on international issues. He took part in documentary work to raise awareness of the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda and is a former adviser to the anti-Moscow former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili.

Glucksmann, who has been accused by opponents of being too much of a Paris intellectual, said he “lost sleep at night” worrying about how the social-democratic left had lost the working class in France. He said the centre left needed to regain “a form of radicality that we lost” and the focus of this would be environmental policy.

He told the daily Libération he made no apology for being an intellectual and would use his background to “better explain the moment we’re living in” rather than relying on “slogans”.

Glucksmann’s partner, Léa Salamé, is the star presenter of the French public broadcaster’s flagship evening news programme. She has stepped down from presenting the news while he runs for president.