Benoît Hamon, the staunchly leftwing outsider who wants to introduce a universal basic income, legalise cannabis and tax robots has topped the poll in the first round of the French Socialist primary race to choose a presidential candidate. He will face the pro-business former prime minister Manuel Valls in a final-round clash between the party’s warring leftwing and free-market factions.



Hamon, the dark horse and most leftwing of all the candidates in the race, took about 35% of the vote while Valls, the economically liberal, self-styled law and order strongman on the right of the party, took about 31%, according to partial early results.

Hamon said his score “sent a clear message of hope and renewal” and that he could “rewrite a page of the history of the left and of France”. He said it was an end to old approaches that no longer worked on the left.



Valls immediately attacked Hamon as an idealist who couldn’t win the presidential election and styled himself as the voice of the serious left in government. “There is now a very clear choice between certain defeat and possible victory, between unachievable promises and a credible left that takes responsibility,” he said.

The final-round battle between the two men will be a bruising encounter between two wings of the Socialist party, which has been bitterly divided throughout François Hollande’s troubled presidency. Hamon, 49, who served as education minister, was ejected from the government in 2014 after opposing Hollande and Valls’s pro-business economic policy.

The voter turnout at about 1.5 million people was low for a primary race, reinforcing fears that the Socialist party – for decades one of the main political forces in France – is battling to remain relevant after anger and disappointment with five years of Hollande’s presidency. Hollande, the least popular president since the war, with a satisfaction rating of 4%, conceded last month that he couldn’t run for reelection.

No matter which candidate it chooses, the party currently looks likely to be defeated in the presidential election. Polls indicate that the frontrunners are the far-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen and the rightwing, socially conservative François Fillon for Les Républicains. In third position is Emmanuel Macron, Hollande’s maverick former economy minister, who has never run for elected office but is rising in the polls on a “neither left or right” ticket. In fourth place is the hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has Communist party backing. The Socialist party, with its candidate yet to be chosen, has lagged behind in fifth position.

Hamon, 49, a Socialist MP in Yvelines outside Paris, was the youngest and furthest left of the candidates in the Socialist primary. He wants to reduce the working week from 35 to 32 hours, levy a tax on robots and provide a monthly universal basic income for 18 to 25-year-olds which will then be extended to all. He has accused politicians on the right and left of twisting French secularism to target French Muslims.



He was the firmest voice in the Socialist party speaking out against the ban on burkini full-body swimsuits on some French beaches last summer, while Valls supported mayors who had imposed the bans. Accused of being a utopian dreamer by his opponents, he drew large crowds to rally and was convincing in TV debates, with voters saying he brought new ideas.

Valls, 54, helped craft Hollande’s pro-business line. But he is at odds with many on the left wing of the Socialist party. He has always been firmly on the party’s right, sometimes causing controversy with a pro-business, economically liberal and unorthodox politics which saw his approach likened to Tony Blair’s. He has been forced to defend Hollande’s record in office, in the face of disappointment from voters on the left and as social democratic parties across Europe face crisis.

Arnaud Montebourg, the former economy minister and flamboyant ex-lawyer who had also run on a leftwing ticket, was eliminated in the first round, with around 18%. He and Hamon were kicked out of Valls’s government at the same time for criticising its economic policies, which they said were too business-friendly.

Montebourg has directed his supporters to vote for Hamon in the second round.