SÉGOLÈNE ROYAL, the leftwing favourite for the next French presidency, outraged fellow Socialists for the second time in a week yesterday by attacking the 35-hour working week, the main legacy of the party’s last term in office.

The 35-hour week had the “unintended consequence of worsening the situation for the most vulnerable workers, notably for women with few qualifications” who now had less time to spend with their families, she said. Mme Royal’s criticism of the sacrosanct 1999 working time law followed her call last week for military training for delinquent teenagers from the housing estates and boot camps for their parents.

The unorthodox positions are part of a campaign by Mme Royal, 52, who is far ahead of other contenders, to cast herself as a tough-minded reformist who is in touch with the people rather than just the Socialist party. Among the rivals whom Mme Royal is unsettling is François Hollande, who is party leader as well as her partner and father of her four children.

So far the self-described “gazelle” of French politics, is succeeding in her strategy of winning so much public support that the party will have to nominate her for the spring 2007 elections, despite what traditionalists see as her heresy over cherished doctrines.

Some Royalistes are worried, however, that the president of the Poitou-Charentes region is focusing too hard on beating Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and favourite centre-right candidate, and not enough on winning over her own party first.

With the party in turmoil over his partner’s maverick campaign, M Hollande distanced himself at the weekend. “Some of Ségolène’s ideas go in the right direction,” he said after her sortie on the estates. “On the other hand, I do not agree with her view on the use of the Army.”

Such ideas would not be in the party manifesto, which is to be released next month, he added.

A radical leftist group within the party called yesterday on Mme Royal to “stop throwing bombshells” into the early campaign. “There is a risk of causing a lot of damage and finishing up with a heavily divided Socialist army,” said Benoît Hamon, a spokesman for the New Socialist Party group.

Laurent Fabius, one of the other would-be nominees for next April’s election, demanded that Mme Royal, an admirer of Tony Blair in a party which abhors the British Prime Minister, be reprimanded for promoting ideas contrary to Socialist tradition.

Yesterday, however, an Ipsos poll by Le Monde showed that Mme Royal had struck a nerve. Some 69 per cent of the public said that they agreed with her ideas for imposing discipline.

Mme Royal’s criticism, although qualified, conflicts with her party’s draft manifesto, which commits a Socialist government to extending the 35-hour week. It even goes further than President Chirac, who backed the 35-hour reform while softening its implementation when his centre-right Government was re-elected in 2002.

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