Left-wing rivalries threaten to derail Jospin's presidential bid

The many competing tribes of the French left have erupted into political name-calling and brawling, less than a month from the presidential election.

Although the fraternal insult-hurling is mostly intended to boost the scores of the smaller left-wing parties in the first round of the election on 21 April, the squabbling could damage the presidential hopes of the Socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin.

The relative solidarity of the left seemed likely to be one of Mr Jospin's strengths in his probable second-round show-down on 5 May with the Gaullist President, Jacques Chirac. But in the past few days, both Mr Jospin's main coalition partners – the Greens and Communists – have personally attacked the presidential front-runner.

The Green candidate, Noel Mamère, said that Mr Jospin's refusal to commit to long-term abandonment of nuclear power was "a declaration of war".

The Communist Party leader and candidate, Robert Hue, said Mr Jospin's presidential programme was "vague" and the Socialist Party "arrogant". He warned Mr Jospin against talk of excluding the Communists from a future centre-left government. "That would be a sign," he said, "that the [French] left had chosen to adopt the right-leaning policies of Tony Blair".

The cause of the brawling is simple enough: the abrupt rise in the polls of the Trotskyist candidate, Arlette Laguiller, who may now come in second to Mr Jospin among the left-wing candidates in the first round.

With around 10 per cent of the vote, she is vying with the far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, for the honour of coming third overall. In other words, she threatens to inflict a humiliating defeat on the once-powerful Communists, the once-rising Greens and even the maverick socialist-nationalist Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who seemed certain until recently to take third place.

Ms Laguiller, 61, a retired bank worker, represents a secretive, even sect-like, party, which believes that the future of humanity is state ownership and the dictatorship of the proletariat. For such a party to threaten to poll double figures (more than twice its record in a national poll) is symptomatic of the disillusion on the left and in the electorate generally.

Mr Jospin has dipped slightly in recent polls and runs neck and neck with Mr Chirac. But a series of polls to be published todayshows him regaining a narrow second-round lead.