FRENCH Socialist leaders look set on a brutal contest for the party’s presidential nomination after rival candidates ganged up against Ségolène Royal, the public’s favourite to succeed President Chirac.

Closing a weekend conference at La Rochelle, François Hollande, the leader of the Socialist party and partner of Mme Royal, appealed yesterday to the feuding factions to stop fighting in the interest of defeating Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate, in next spring’s elections.

“Let us put aside denigration and suspicion,” he said. “We must not give anything to the Right to use against us.”

The party’s nomination, due to be decided by a members’ vote in November, should not become an obsession, he said. “If you want to seduce, you should not be obsessed.”

M Hollande’s own position, as party chief and mere consort to the darling of the opinion polls, symbolised the unhappiness inside the party, which is packed with rival would-be presidents and a rank-and-file that wants a relative outsider.

The party’s ageing “elephants”, as its senior figures are known, spent the congress signalling their disdain for the media campaign by Mme Royal, 52, a former junior minister whom they deem to be a lightweight unqualified for presidential office.

Mme Royal, who is president of the Poitou-Charentes region but does not hold a party post, attracted the biggest crowd at the congress with her opening speech on Friday. However, the event was boycotted by all the other contenders — Laurent Fabius, 60, a former Prime Minister, Jack Lang, 66, a former long-serving Culture and Education Minister, Dominiqué Strauss-Kahn, 56, a former Finance Minister, and Lionel Jospin, 69, the last Socialist Prime Minister and unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2002. M Hollande, who has positioned himself as a neutral umpire in the battle of the elephants, was also absent. Yesterday he indicated that he, too, would like to be considered a candidate.

Mme Royal refused to join in the feuding and stayed away from most of the events, choosing instead to give extensive media interviews. Her preference for a personal media campaign over the traditional path of alliance building within the party has enraged the older candidates, who believe that they are far more qualified to run the nation.

M Jospin took a swipe at Mme Royal’s supposed lack of policy ideas in an emotional speech on Saturday night. It was his first public appearance since he “retired from political life” on the night of his elimination from the first presidential round in 2002 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National. “The conduit is not the content,” he said. “Technique does not replace policy. You have to pronounce clear positions on the great issues.”

M Jospin is being backed in his attempted comeback by Bertrand Delanoë, the Mayor of Paris, and several former ministers.

He came close to tears delivering his first mea culpa for the 2002 disaster. He had campaigned poorly and had suffered deeply from his “cruel defeat”, he said.

Mme Royal continues to top the opinion polls as France’s choice for president, two or three points ahead of M Sarkozy in a hypothetical run-off between the two leading candidates of Left and Right.

She is not as popular in the party as with the public at large, but polls suggest that the membership would give her a clear mandate to lead the Socialist party in the 2007 elections.

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