Bernard-Henri Lévy

One of the biggest names of the French left yesterday turned his back on decades of political loyalty when he declared the Socialist party to be “dead” and called for its rapid dissolution.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, France’s most media-friendly philosopher and left-leaning intellectual, said the party had been taken over by a “reactionary ideology” that had led ultimately to its failure.

What remained of the strong and popular centre-left movement that made its name as a protector of ordinary people, he said, was a “dead body” and an organisation “in the process of losing whatever remained of its soul”.

“Is the PS [Parti Socialiste] going to die? No. It is dead. No one, or almost no one, dares say it. But everyone, or almost everyone, knows it’s true,” he said in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper published yesterday.

The flamboyant writer and commentator, as well-known in France for his billowing white shirts as for his politics, said the party should be dissolved and renamed “as quickly as possible”.

Infighting among France’s socialists, one of the most common features of the country’s political landscape, has ratcheted up a gear since their dismal performance in June’s European elections, in which Nicolas Sarkozy became the first sitting French president since 1979 to top the poll. The PS was also humiliated by the unexpected success of Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s Europe Ecologie party, which benefited from disillusionment with the traditional left to beat it into an embarrassing third place in Paris.

“We’re talking here about the alternative to Nicolas Sarkozy, about people’s hope,” said Lévy. “And yet this PS does not embody any kind of hope. It provokes merely anger and exasperation.”

Lévy’s virulent attack on the party led by Martine Aubry, the straight-talking but uncharismatic mayor of Lille, came after weeks of backstabbing and open criticism of the general secretary, who was elected with a wafer-thin majority over her great rival Ségolène Royal last autumn.

Now, however, it is not just Royal’s telegenic appeal with which an embattled Aubry must contend. Yesterday, Lévy’s criticisms were echoed by Julien Dray, a socialist MP facing charges for embezzlement, who launched an all-out attack denouncing her “powerlessness, amateurism and above all a surprising lack of ability to listen to what is happening in her party and in society”.

In recent weeks the future of the party has also been called into question by younger members of the party with their own ambitions for leadership.

Lizzy Davies in Paris
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 19 July 2009 21.46 BST