Former first lady accuses Hollande of branding poor ‘toothless’

Francois Hollande’s image took a new knock yesterday with publication of a tell-all book in which ex-partner Valerie Trierweiler accused the French President of describing the poor as "the toothless".

Hollande ended his seven-year relationship with Trierweiler after his affair with an actress was revealed in January.

The 49-year-old journalist vowed at the time that, breaking with a French tradition of maintaining discretion over private lives in politics, she would not keep quiet. The 320-page book is laced with unflattering references to Hollande as cold or callous. But the charge that he ridiculed the poor was the one that sparked most media debate.

“He presented himself as a man who disliked the rich,” Trierweiler, a journalist with glossy magazine Paris Match, wrote of Hollande’s 2012 election campaign.

“In reality, the president doesn’t like the poor. In private, this man — the left-winger — calls them ‘the toothless’ and is so pleased at how funny he is.”

Hollande’s Elysee Palace has refused to comment on the book. But, in an unexpected turn, Segolene Royal, the mother of Hollande’s four children and the woman he left for Trierweiler, sprang to his defence. “This is the opposite of what he stands for,” Royal, now his energy minister, told RMC radio, calling the accusation “total nonsense”.

When he won power in 2012, Hollande, 60, marketed himself as a “Mr Normal” president and said he would shun the bling-bling ostentation of conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy.

While he this year took a more centrist course, he still insists that social justice is at the core of his government’s policies. Yet with the economy stuck in a rut and unemployment running at around 10%, his popularity rating has sunk to the lowest of any post-war leader.