A scandal in the south-west shows up the metropolitan party’s weaknesses

Frêche preparing another gaffe

HIS detractors call him an incorrigible racist with a “dictator-like personality”. One likens him to Mussolini. His supporters insist he is brave, authentic and in tune with plain-talking local attitudes. Georges Frêche, president of Languedoc-Roussillon, is an old-style Socialist baron. But his uncanny ability to offend everybody, from black footballers to Jews, has pitched him into battle against his party bosses—and reawakened anti-Parisianism on the left.

Mr Frêche has a record of gaffes. Three years ago, he was expelled by the party for complaining of too many black players in France’s football team. “There are nine blacks out of 11,” he said. “Ordinarily, there should be three or four.” He called harkis, Algerians who fought for France in the war of independence, “subhuman”. Now he has said Laurent Fabius, a Socialist ex-prime minister of Jewish origin, has “not a Catholic face”.

Indignation among Socialist bigwigs in Paris was instant. The party had decided not to challenge Mr Frêche’s re-election bid next month. But Martine Aubry, the Socialist leader, has now declared that she will field an alternative candidate, Hélène Mandroux, mayor of Montpellier. This week she suspended 59 Socialist candidates who insist on remaining on Mr Frêche’s electoral list.

Mr Frêche has mounted a creative defence. His comments about Mr Fabius, he insisted, “had no religious connotation”; the phrase was common in French. He said he was a supporter of Israel. The Socialist leadership was out to get him, he said, inspired by parisianisme and scorn for his southern accent. It had become a party of politically correct moralists, he declared, describing it as “anti-alcohol, anti-smoking, anti-racist, homosexual, black, white, yellow, red, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox, Japanese, garden gnomes, pit bull, anti-harmful sentiment, anti-anger, anti-vulgarity, anti-everything that is not acceptable.”

All this might have spelt political trouble for Mr Frêche. Yet far from respecting the party’s bid for the moral high ground, locals have swung behind him. The man who spent 27 years as mayor of Montpellier tops the polls, with 31%, according to OpinionWay. Ms Mandroux comes sixth, with just 6%. In a run-off vote, Mr Frêche should triumph.

All this confirms that Socialists struggle to combine regional power with national credibility. Local distrust of national leaders runs deep. The Frêche affair may boost Ms Aubry’s standing in Paris, but not in the provinces, where local barons guide members’ votes for the party’s presidential nominee. This disconnect is problematic. The party is likely to sweep the regional elections next month. But it has not won a presidential contest since 1988, nor elected a national government since 1997.

The Frêche fuss also shows the potency of anti-Parisianism. Local voters may or may not take offence at Mr Frêche’s remarks. But nothing infuriates them more than being told what to think by bien-pensant grandees in the capital.