Paris (AFP)

Manuel Valls, former Prime Minister, ex-PS, now a city councilor in Barcelona, ​​has been sending signals for several weeks showing his desire to return to do politics in France, even if he claims to be "a candidate for nothing" .

After an interview on February 28 with the Parisian, in which he affirmed that he would "never fail to be useful to the French", it is in the columns of the World that this Franco-Spanish, left in vain in 2018 to the conquering the city hall of Barcelona, ​​launches a new test balloon.

Friday, Mr. Valls confirmed to AFP that he would participate on March 28 in a debate in the National Assembly on the issue of "populism". In April, he will attend a conference on the Middle East (notably Islamism), organized by La rule du jeu, a magazine founded by Bernard-Henri Lévy.

"I am not in exile, I have not disappeared and come regularly to Paris," he told Le Monde. Before adding: "I have not broken with this city, nor with French politics", but "I am not a candidate for anything. I have no plan".

Asked about a possible entry into the government - a reshuffle is not to be excluded after the municipal elections - the former head of government opted for caution, while expressing his interest. "I am not excluding anything and do not know what the future will be like," he said. And he adds: "I consider that at 57 I am not completely finished".

While his relations with Emmanuel Macron were extremely tense when he was Prime Minister and Mr. Macron Minister of the Economy, he now claims to have "regular contacts" and "peaceful" relations with the Head of State, that the former related deputy LREM supported in 2017.

Sufficiently appeased for Emmanuel Macron to want to make him a minister? "There are weaknesses in the government. Valls is a good politician. However, one of the big problems of Macron, it is nevertheless a certain difficulty in having personalities, it is its isolation, it has struggling to find allies, "says a former Vallsista MP, ex-PS and today LREM.

The same insists: "The counterpart of the renewal, it is a form of amateurism. Perhaps it is necessary sure values".

- "It was rather flop" -

With his solid experience as an elected official (mayor of Evry, deputy for Essonne) and minister (Interior and Matignon), Manuel Valls could have the required profile for the second time of the quinquennium. In Evry, of which he was mayor from 2001 to 2012, local elected officials judged favorably the results of this "man with a fist".

The "grip" was also one of the qualities recognized by his peers when he found himself propelled to the Interior in 2012, in the wake of the victory of François Hollande and which earned him, with his popularity at the time, nickname "Left Sarkozy".

"If your comrades do not eat you all believed, you will end up one day president", had predicted to him (in substance), Sarkozy in 2007, after that he had, in vain, tried to recruit him within the framework of his policy of 'opening.

Today, "I think the French are not waiting for him," pings Gilles Savary, also a former ex-PS deputy and now invested in "a pole of the left" in the macronie, "Territories and progress". "I'm not sure the circumstances are right for him to return," he insists, with "the way he did it ...".

The ex-socialist notably alludes to the round trips of Mr. Valls between Paris and Barcelona, ​​and his declarations which change depending on whether he is in France or in Spain. If he speaks today of France as being his "only country", he swore, in 2018, that "whatever happens", he would remain "in Barcelona".

"I no longer believe in returns to politics at all," says Julien Bargeton, Senator LREM, former PS. "Internally" at La République does not work, Valls' declarations to the World, "it was rather flop".

© 2020 AFP