French centre left urged to wage 'existential battle' against the far right
MEP Raphaël Glucksmann has become the French centre-left candidate for the 2027 presidential election after winning a Socialist party primary. He urged his camp to fight to stop Marine Le Pen's far right from winning.
Raphaël Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament, has been chosen as the centre-left and social democrat candidate for France's 2027 presidential election. He won the primary organised by the Socialist party decisively on Sunday night, and on Monday he called on the centre left to wage an "existential battle" to stop Marine Le Pen's far right from taking the presidency.
"We've got to rid our hearts of the spirit of defeat," said Glucksmann, founder of the small party Place Publique, in an interview with France Inter radio. He described France as living through a "historic moment", with the far right at the gates of power, and said the campaign would be brutal and "like no other we have ever experienced".
Weak position in the polls
The centre left currently trails the far right by a wide margin, and also the radical left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Glucksmann polls at between 9% and 14%, behind Le Pen and behind the centre-right contender Édouard Philippe, a former prime minister under Emmanuel Macron. Mélenchon's party, La France Insoumise, boycotted the primary, and Glucksmann refuses to work with him.
Who is Glucksmann
Glucksmann is 46, an essayist and intellectual, and has been an MEP since 2019. He is strongly pro-Europe and pro-Ukraine. His candidacy means the Socialist party will, for the first time since its founding in 1969, have no candidate of its own in a presidential race; it suffered two crushing defeats in the last two presidential elections.
He aims to win back centre-left voters who switched to Macron, though critics on the left accuse him of being too centrist. Glucksmann said the left must regain "a form of radicality that we lost", focusing on environmental policy. He said Macron, who stands down next spring, "wasted 10 years" on the climate emergency.
His partner, Léa Salamé, is the star presenter of the public broadcaster's flagship evening news programme. She has stepped down from presenting the news while he runs for president.
