Under the sun, the former head of state wishes to bring his "support" to Mrs. Hidalgo, "a passing of the baton" as she tries to give yet another boost to a presidential campaign which 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 Mr. Holland, himself far from being a favorite before finishing at the Elysee Palace in 2017, during a visit to the Tulle market.

Between stalls of cheeses, meats and other sellers of early vegetables, the duo appears 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.

“How are you?”, “Are you okay?”, “Are the children okay?”: At his home in Tulle, where he owns a house, the former president is very comfortable in the streets he knows by heart.

"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 at the bend of a cheese stall about the stammering campaign of the mayor of the capital, Mr. Hollande insisted: "Where is it skating? The campaign has not yet started!"

Before going on: "Here we set off, this is the object of our visit, the campaign really begins, in my experience, in mid-January. Anne still has time to convince the French."

The candidate, always accompanied by the ex-president, was to work on it from Saturday evening during the Feast of the Rose in Malemort, a village near Brive-la-Gaillarde, after a signing session in the after- noon at the Brive Book Fair.

"Until the end"

In the meantime, François Hollande is there to give advice.

"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 eyes" of what is happening, "sufficiently mature and aware of the stakes not to put themselves in the perspective" of electing a populist candidate in next april.

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

To succeed in his campaign, he advises Ms. Hidalgo to create "the force that will allow the French to give themselves the prospect of alternation".

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 ".

The mayor of Paris and PS candidate for the 2022 presidential election Anne Hidalgo (4th from left) and the mayor of Tulle Bernard Combes (2nd from left) during a city visit, November 6, 2021 PASCAL LACHENAUD AFP

"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