http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/french-interior-minister-manuel-valls-unsettles-socialists-with-new-popularity-a-930498.html
On the Far-Right of the Left
The story of Manuel Valls is one of a rapid ascent. In a country whose political class is now despised, the interior minister still manages to garner high approval ratings, most recently at 56 percent. Hollande is stagnating at a historical low of 23 percent, while Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and the rest of Hollande's government aren't faring much better.
For months, Valls' fellow cabinet ministers have had to endure positive media stories about him. The weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur once dubbed him the "vice president" on its cover, though France's parliamentary system has no such office. According to a new poll, Valls stands a better chance of winning the 2017 election than Hollande does. This is the kind of news that arouses envy among his fellow Socialists.
They are suspicious of Valls because one source of his popularity is his general disregard for the traditionalist mainstream of the French left. Many Socialists doubt that he is even one of them in spirit. In Germany, Valls stances would make him one of the many conservative members of Germany's center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). But, in France's Socialist Party, he is viewed as a right-winger in disguise.
In 2008, a collection of interviews with Valls was published under the title "Enough With the Old Socialism. It's Time to Finally Be a Leftist!" When he ran in the Socialist Party presidential primary in 2011, he proposed removing the word "socialist" from the party's name, abolishing the 35-hour workweek and lowering labor costs. The result: He only captured 6 percent of the vote.
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