Knives came out in the beleaguered French Socialist party yesterday as Ségolène Royal, the defeated candidate, made a bid for leadership while rivals on the Left and Right blamed her for dragging them to their third presidential rout in a row.

The defeat was viewed widely as a brutal and long overdue wake-up call for the Socialists on the need to reform for the 21st century. Like Britain’s old Labour Party in the Thatcher era, the French Left is torn between would-be pro-market reformers and advocates who want to swing hard left. In the campaign, Ms Royal improvised her own attempt to modernise the old ideas without party backing.

Ms Royal, 53, claimed that her 47 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s run-off made her a natural leader for the party that has been run since 1997 by François Hollande, her domestic partner. Leadership is essential with parliamentary elections only six weeks away, she said. Despite defeat, her novel campaign had mobilised the Left more than anyone for years, she claimed.

“I have started a profound renewal of political life, of its methods and of the Left . . . the wind of freedom will not stop here. It will grow,” she told supporters after her defeat on Sunday. “I remain with you on the front line of the combat.”

She announced plans to stage a rally in her support in Paris next week, prompting mockery from rivals who suggested that she had not understood that she had lost.

Ms Royal’s claims angered senior party figures who believe that she was the wrong choice as candidate and that she had bungled a campaign that she waged at a fatal distance from the party. They faulted her for woolly thinking and focusing too much on her personality.

Commentators and voters agreed that Ms Royal’s biggest weakness was her vagueness on core economic and social issues compared with the lucidly argued plans of Nicolas Sarkozy, the winner. She repeatedly ducked questions on tele-vision by saying that as president she would leave details on taxing and spending to junior ministers.

Mr Hollande, 52, who was himself kept at a distance by his partner, sought to keep the peace among the party elders yesterday but he acknowledged her failings. “No doubt we did not talk enough about concrete proposals,” he said.

Revealing something of the tension that the long campaign has inflicted on his relations with Ms Royal, Mr Hollande reminded Socialists that he was the party leader. “I embody the legitimacy of the Socialist party. She has legitimacy as the candidate,” he said.

Mr Hollande tried to slap down Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the leader of the party’s reformist wing, who attacked him for failing to renovate the Socialist party and offered his services to lead the reform.

A group of leading Royal supporters appealed yesterday to the party to forge an alliance with François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who scored 18 per cent in the first-round vote. According to Ms Royal’s supporters a broad centre-left group, including members of Mr Bayrou’s new Democracy Movement party, was the best hope for Socialists. They included Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Greens MEP and 1968 student activist, and Jean-Pierre Mignard, Ms Royal’s lawyer.

Laurent Fabius, a former Prime Minister who leads the traditional Left, said that the Socialists must update their party as Mr Sarkozy had done with the conservative movement: “That means we must take full responsibility for our left-wing values. It does not mean turning the Left rightwards.”

The row has alarmed party officials who must fight a general election within weeks. Vin-cent Peillon, an MP and party spokesman, told his colleagues: “Put your squabbling over egos back into your holsters. Ségolène Royal has reset the meter of the Socialists at zero. Let’s work for new politics.”

Hello, Sarkozy

“ Of course we don’t always agree as you know, but when we do we can be a real force for good in Europe and across the world. And I think that with Nicolas Sarkozy as president there’s a fantastic opportunity for Britain and France to work together in the years ahead” Tony Blair

“We certainly look forward to cooperation with the French. And we know that there are going to be areas of disagreement. But there are . . . real opportunities to work together on a broad range of issues” Tony Snow, White House press secretary

“In what is one of the crucial phases for Europe, it is important to continue the close, trusting and intensive cooperation between Germany and France” Spokesman for Angela Merkel, German Chancellor

“I congratulate Nicolas Sarkozy on his election as president of France. He has campaigned with energy on a platform for change from the economy to the environment” David Cameron, Conservative Party leader

“At the end of the day and without pretending to know what is in their hearts, French voters opted for energy. Against Ségolène Royal, Mother Courage seeking to accompany the French in their difficulties, they gave their preference to the man who presented himself as carrying the promise of action against a predictable decline” Le Monde

“This election could be seen as the absolute triumph of Bonapartism, that political culture which France decidely cannot get rid of. Nicolas Sarkozy enshrines it on his own” Libération

“The French have chosen the candidate of rupture (a clean break) in economic policy and social policy, too. They are now expecting a break with the past. Nicolas Sarkozy has an exceptional legitimacy to carry it through” Les Echos

Source: Times research

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