On the Tulle market or later in the evening at the Fête de la Rose in Malemort, the former head of state gave his "support" to Mrs. Hidalgo, "a passing of the baton" when she tries to give yet another boost to a presidential campaign that is struggling to take off.

The mayor of Paris is poorly placed in the polls where she vegetates around 5% of voting intentions?

"It's a very good sign," said Holland, himself far from being a favorite before finishing at the Elysee Palace in 2012.

Between stalls of cheeses, meats and other sellers of early vegetables, the duo appears in the morning in front of the press for a family photo, but also, according to Ms. Hidalgo, "to hear and get rich" in contact with the 15,000 inhabitants of the city of which Mr. Hollande was the mayor between 2001 and 2008.

"These pancakes look good", says Ms. Hidalgo in front of a counter, quickly picked up by the manager Françoise, 60, who explains to her "pancakes, that's the name in Paris, here, they're tourtous" .

Asked about the stammering campaign of the candidate of the PS, Mr. Holland insists: "It skates where? The campaign has not yet started!"

Before moving on: "Here we set off, the campaign really begins, in my experience, in mid-January. Anne still has time to convince the French."

The candidate did not wait and made every effort to present her project to the people who came to meet her in the afternoon during a signing session for her book "Une femme française" at the Brive Book Fair. ... placed not far from the former president, who also signed his latest work there.

Mr. Holland and Ms. Hidalgo then met in the evening for the Rose Festival in the small town of Malemort, warmly applauded by 300 activists and local elected officials.

"If Anne is running, it is to win the presidential election!", Launched the former president, in front of a full room.

"We will be there. At the end, there will be a victory," assured the candidate.

"Until the end"

Saturday, in Corrèze, François Hollande especially took the time to distill messages.

"It is not the accumulation of promises that attracts voters," he told the press.

"There are cycles. It is not the same thing to be in the media space several months before the election and to be a candidate," he said, directly targeting the putative far-right candidate Eric Zemmour, very present in the media.

For him, "the French are not yet in the choice but in the gaze" of what is happening, "sufficiently mature and aware of the issues not to put themselves in the perspective" of electing a populist candidate in April .

But he considers all the same "worrying" the "themes used, the sentences pronounced and the provocations made".

Alongside Mr. Holland and Mrs. Hidalgo on the station market, the current mayor of Tulle Bernard Combes (DVG) also welcomes the candidacy of the socialist, "the most serious on the left" with "a vision of a woman who has the experience and skills ".

"She embodies more than the PS, she embodies the entire left," wants to believe Mr. Combes who nevertheless slammed the door of the Socialist Party in September.

Ms. Hidalgo assures us: "We have had difficult years: the PS collapsed after the presidential election in 2017 but the great idea that we carry in my family of thought, social democracy, is there".

"And I feel that a lot of French people are orphans", she underlines.

Convinced that she can straighten the bar in the polls, the mayor of Paris insists in front of the station, determined: "Yes, I will go to the end!".

© 2021 AFP