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Alain Juppé
Alain Juppé addresses a packed meeting in the village of Ducey, Normandy. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images
Alain Juppé addresses a packed meeting in the village of Ducey, Normandy. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

Alain Juppé: from cold, grey automaton to saviour of France?

This article is more than 8 years old

He was loathed 20 years ago, but the former prime minister has undergone a remarkable transformation – and set his sights on the presidency

In a packed village hall in rural Normandy, hundreds of people cheered as a 70-year-old politician, hailed as the saviour of France, took the stage.

“Our society is not well!” boomed Alain Juppé, the mayor of Bordeaux and an elder statesman. “France is disorientated, frightened, fractured and hatred is spreading, but I refuse to give in to the intellectuals who say the nation is in decline.” He railed against the far-right ideas and anti-immigration rhetoric that has come to dominate French politics. “France can bounce back,” he said. “We have to break this mood of suspicion and build a society of trust.”

After a standing ovation, supporters rushed forward to shake his hand, jostling for selfies and autographs. This was “Juppémania”, France’s extraordinary new political phenomenon, an unexpected outpouring of emotion that could change the course of the 2017 presidential race.

The centre-right Juppé, who was once dubbed Amstrad and the walking computer for his robotic efficiency and cold, grey image, is now France’s favourite politician; many want him to be the next president. His transformation has flabbergasted pollsters. Twenty years ago, he was the most loathed prime minister in modern times. His contested pension changes resulted in up to two million people taking to the streets in 1995, paralysing France in the worst strikes since May 1968.

Alain Juppé (C) attends a meeting in Paris in July 1984, while serving as the city’s deputy mayor. Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/AFP/Getty Images

Then in 2004, Juppé, who began his political career in the 1970s as a speechwriter for Jacques Chirac, received a 14-month suspended sentence and was barred from holding elected office for a year over a corrupt 1980s scheme that illegally put workers for Chirac’s political party on the payroll of Paris town hall. The conviction, however, has not damaged him. It is accepted that he did not profit personally and instead he is seen as having selflessly taken the flak for Chirac.

Now Juppé has taken on what could be his toughest battle yet, running against the former president Nicolas Sarkozy in the primary race to chose a candidate for the right and centre-right in France’s 2017 presidential election.

As Sarkozy moves ever further to the right in an effort to court voters from the Front National with hardline policies on immigration and national identity, Juppé has become his fiercest opponent, calling for moderation and social harmony.

He coined the term France’s “happy identity” and argues that everyone can live together despite their differences. He also says the country needs pro-business structural reform, public spending cuts and a firm, pro-European ideal. The standoff has become a personal battle for the soul of the French right, a contest between Sarkozy’s jumpy and divisive personality and Juppé’s pipe-and-slippers calm.

“Alain Juppé is a unifying figure who can talk about anything without creating divisions and controversy. We need that because France is at a crossroads. There’s a rise in extremism in France and if we can’t get a handle on it, anything could happen,” said Samuel Delahaye, the deputy mayor of a village in Calvados and part of Juppé’s Normandy support committee.

Alain Juppé and Nicolas Sarkozy share a platform in Limoges in October 2015. Photograph: Nicolas Tucat/AFP/Getty Images

“He’s so calming and reassuring,” said Elisabeth Sérié, who works with elderly people and drove 80km to hear him speak.

“This country needs to reform and I think he’s level-headed enough to do it,” said Roger Martin, a retired dairy farmer.

French political history is littered with figures who peaked too soon, outsiders who were tipped for president years before an election but never made it. . There have been warnings that Juppé’s bubble could burst, but he has consistently been France’s favourite politician and his popularity has been increasing in opinion polls for more than a year.

Asked by the Guardian if his momentum could withstand another year until the final primary vote in November 2016, he said: “Of course”.

Juppé’s popularity rests on the fact that he has surprisingly also become the darling of the left. With the Socialist François Hollande rated France’s least popular president on record and his party in electoral difficulty, some despairing voters on the left have wondered whether the centre-right moderate offers the only hope of beating Sarkozy or the far-right Marine Le Pen in the 2017 presidential race. Juppé’s social views, such as supporting adoption for same-sex couples, have appealed to the left.

He has also brushed aside potential problems such as his age. He says that being 70 is a plus point because he would only serve one term and would be brave enough to push through reforms. “I will tell the truth straightaway,” he promised in Normandy.

Alain Juppé tries an omelette during a visit to Mont Saint-Michel in October 2015. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

The primary race will be cut-throat. Sarkozy is fixated on winning back the presidency. He has a firm support base and controls the Les Républicains party machine and the workings of the primary vote itself. Other lesser candidates such as the former prime minister François Fillon and the moderate young star Bruno Le Maire are trailing behind Juppé and Sarkozy, but could eat into Juppé’s vote.

“Alain Juppé is more fragile than you might think,” said the political analyst Jérôme Sainte-Marie at PollingVox. He said that although Juppé’s views sat at the centre of the French political spectrum, they could be off-kilter with many rightwing sympathisers taking part in the primary vote who had shifted further right in recent years and hardened their views on society, immigration and Europe. “His ideas on harmony, happy globalisation and the successes of immigration might not be the discourse that rightwing sympathisers want to hear at the moment.”

Edouard Lecerf, the global director of political and opinion research at pollsters TNS said: “Juppé’s message has been to reconcile and unify France, playing on the idea that the country is a bit lost, fractured, tense and needs to pull together. But when the primary campaign begins in earnest and the debate becomes less consensual, will those ideas resist?”

For now, Juppé, who Chirac deemed “the best among us”, is standing firm, publishing a series of books, building support networks and canvassing for funds. He has not ruled out running for president as a lone horse if the primary race fails to go his way.

“It’s a long-distance race,” said Bernadette Laurent, a supporter and retired civil servant from the defence ministry. “He knows he’s got no room to make mistakes because at his stage in life, he won’t have a second chance.”

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