By Ingrid Melander
PARIS (Reuters) - One French socialist veteran calls it "collective suicide".
Instead of closing ranks behind President Francois Hollande's reform drive, his Socialist party is embroiled in a very public fight over his policies just as the battle for the 2017 presidential election kicks off.
Hollande's sweeping labor reform plans have drawn howls of dismay from the party's far left with youth organizations threatening to take to the streets.
Discontent is now at such a pitch that the already deeply unpopular president could well face a fight for the party nomination rather than benefit from the usual shoo-in for incumbents.
Faced with an outcry, Hollande's government has postponed its final draft of the labor reform plans by two weeks - but this seems unlikely to do much to repair the damage done to party cohesion.
Martine Aubry, a former party head and architect of the 35-hour working week who is influential among those uneasy with Hollande's pro-business switch, accused him of betraying left-wing values and taking steps that would weaken France.
"The party is in danger, that's for sure. It's like a collective suicide," former culture minister Jack Lang told Le Parisien daily, accusing Aubry of back-stabbing which he said had "left the party in tatters."
Aubry's comments had the same ring as those of Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Britain's Jeremy Corbyn or the United States' Bernie Sanders, though traditional parties in France are still well entrenched in the political landscape and hold the key to who eventually runs in elections.
Elected in 2012 on traditional left wing rhetoric that included labeling the world of finance as "the enemy", Hollande outed himself as a social-democrat at the start of January 2014, embarking on a series of corporate tax cuts to boost investment
His four years in power have been dogged by inability to tackle high unemployment. But all the same, despite some rumblings, the party, which over the years has often split by acrimonious fighting between various factions, had overall managed to weld a facade of unity. Until now.
Following a controversial plan to strip those convicted of terrorism of French citizenship in the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks the labor reform plan has now sparked open warfare in socialist ranks.
Standing up for France's protective labor laws, and the totemic 35 hour workweek, is key to getting the loyalty of the traditional left. Hollande's plans to put many of the rules up for negotiation between employers and unions are being seen as a betrayal of core left-wing values.
Some twenty left-wing youth organizations are urging students to take to the streets against the labor reform on March 9 while an on-line petition against the law has gathered over 885,000 signatures and is getting more support by the day.
"To be re-elected, a president needs to have a good track-record, and his party and, more widely, his camp, behind him," Ifop pollsters' Frederic Dabi said. "Hollande does not have that."
Only 20 percent of the French consider Hollande has a good economic policy, an Ifop-Fiducial poll published on Tuesday showed.
PARTY RIVALS
Once thought impossible in a country where the outgoing president always represents his party in the next election, calls for left-wing primaries to decide a socialist candidate in 2017 are now growing more strident.
Names of possible rivals are emerging.
Former economy minister Arnaud Montebourg, who was kicked out of government in August 2014 for criticizing policy, is said to be considering running against Hollande for the nomination.
"The problem for the Socialist party is that we can see the power of Aubry and others to cause trouble but we can't really see them gathering enough support to build something new," said Francois Miquet-Marty, head of the Viavoice polling institute.
To make things worse for Hollande, leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon, a former party stalwart who left it eight years ago, says he will run in the 2017 election, a move that is set to split the left-of-center vote in the first round and further dent the chances of the Socialists making it to the run-offs.
With the government now seeking to defuse the tension by saying it is open to some massage of the labor reform plans, Finance Minister Michel Sapin tried to put a brave face on the party divisions, announcing business as usual.
"Have you ever seen at any time the (French) Socialist party where we didn't debate, where people wouldn't say we'd divide ourselves and break up? And every time we get together in the end and win elections," he told iTele newschannel.
But Stephane Rozes, the head of the CAP political analysis group, said the problem this time is that both camps in the divided party are out of touch with voters' concerns.
"There's a real gap between what the party is split on - whether economic policy should focus more on supply or demand, more on helping workers or employers - and what really matters to voters," he said.
"And the far-right National Front is the one that benefits from the electorate's anger, because they clearly back preserving social rights, being protectionist."