Socialists Seek New Leader to End Feuding and Challenge Sarkozy

The French Socialist party last night took the first step in its labyrinthine process to choose a new leader charismatic enough to reinvent the French left and provide a viable opposition to Nicolas Sarkozy.

The Socialists, who have spent much of the past few months stabbing each other in the back, last night voted on six motions to reinvigorate the party put forward on behalf of candidates. Three motions are expected to emerge as favorites, allowing the party to draw up a shortlist for the leadership vote on November 20. The main candidates are the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë; the former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, and the mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry.

Delanoë is the favorite in the polls. If he takes over, he will be well-placed to run for election as France's first gay president in 2012. He is lauded for green initiatives such as Paris's bike hire scheme, and for cultural projects such as transforming Paris's riverbank into a summer "beach". But critics say he is a traditionalist as grey as his trademark suits. Delanoë, who represents the classic social democrat wing of the party, says it needs an "authoritative" leader. When he launched his campaign he unashamedly called himself a liberal - a dreaded word on the French left - and he has since been at pains to explain that he is only politically liberal and not an advocate of unfettered capitalism.

Royal has accused Delanoë of standing for "immobilism" and says the social democrat model is outdated. She has used the financial crisis to shift left, suggesting that any French business in profit be prevented from laying off staff and advising that leaders of failing banks be barred from ever working again in finance.

Aubry, the daughter of the former European commission leader Jacques Delors, is a former minister who introduced France's 35-hour week. She has united various party factions behind her left-leaning project. Some suggest she could be a convenient interim party leader who would make way for a popular figure such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, currently managing director of the International Monetary Fund, to run as a Socialist presidential candidate in 2012.