It’s been a year of cruel anniversaries for France’s Socialist Party (PS). In 1971, at its inaugural congress in Épinay-sur-Seine, a generation of activists and politicians laid the foundations of a big tent social-democratic force, hoping to ride the wave of post-’68 social movements and conquer institutional power.

In 1981, François Mitterrand finally became the first Socialist elected to France’s highest office — ending two decades of Gaullist and conservative rule, and cementing the PS in the presidency for fourteen years. Having reined in the French Communist Party (PCF) — France’s dominant left-wing force in the immediate postwar period — the Socialist Party established itself as one of the key pillars of the Fifth Republic.

Or so it seemed. Fast forward to 2021, and it would be an understatement to say that the party has seen better days. The end game of its long drift to the right since the 1980s, the PS was battered by François Hollande’s disastrous tenure between 2012 and 2017, which saw droves of party cadres and officials jump ship and join forces behind the then president’s former economy minister and eventual successor, Emmanuel Macron. Contested by the En Marche! leader to its right, and by both the Greens and Jean-Luc Mélenchon to its left, the Socialist Party has been outgrown by the breakdown of the party system it helped usher into existence half a century ago.