French Prime Minister Manuel Valls faces an uphill battle to unite his Socialist Party and overcome his government's deep unpopularity as he prepares to throw his hat into the ring for next year's presidential election.
The 54-year-old is expected to announce on Monday that he is a candidate for January's primary to choose the Socialist nominee, after President Francois Hollande said he would not seek a new term.
Within the party, the tough-talking centrist must win over left-wingers suspicious of his pro-business stance, and with the wider electorate, he would have to overcome the unpopularity of Mr Hollande, whose poll ratings have sunk to as low as 4 per cent.
Opinion polls make him favourite to win his party's ticket, but his pro-business reforms and tough stance on law and order have made him enemies within his own party and it will be a hard fight.
Even if he does secure the nomination, surveys show the presidential contest is set to come down to a run-off on May 7 between right-winger Francois Fillon of the Les Republicains party and Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-EU, anti-immigrant National Front.
Mr Valls has been Mr Hollande's prime minister since March 2014, after being his "top cop" interior minister for two years. He had strong opinion poll ratings when he was in the Interior Ministry but has seen his own popularity fall since.
A Harris Interactive poll on Monday showed 69 per cent of voters do not trust him. That's better than Mr Hollande's 78 per cent but hardly a good score.
STRAIGHT-TALKING
Mr Valls is not your usual high-ranking French politician.
Born in Barcelona to a Spanish father and a Swiss-Spanish mother who later left a country ruled by General Francisco Franco, Mr Valls would, if elected president, be the first French leader who was not born French - he took French citizenship aged 20, three years after joining the Socialist Party.
With a degree in history, he is also one of the rare senior French politicians who has not gone to the country's elite ENA administrative school.
As implementer of Mr Hollande's pro-business reforms, Mr Valls is tarred by the same brush as his boss in the eyes of several influential Socialist figures who have seen the lurch to the right as a betrayal of party values.
His straight-talking style, which critics describe as abrupt, and criticism of Socialist sacred cows, such as the 35-hour work week, have earned him the backing of those who want the party to be more centrist but the animosity of others.
His hard line on secularism and security issues - witnessed by his comments on the full body burkini swimwear being a "provocation" and calls for the Muslim headscarf to be banned in universities - have caused controversy.
Mr Valls has recently sought to soften his image and made proposals on a minimum guaranteed revenue for all and life-long training rights, policies seen as more left-wing and a sign he is seeking to broaden his appeal in the run-up to the primary.
He has nevertheless indicated he will defend Mr Hollande's legacy. "We must defend our record. We must defend this action and I will do that unfailingly," he said.
If, as expected, he does run for the Socialist Party ticket, his main rival will be Arnaud Montebourg, a leftist firebrand and former economy minister under Mr Hollande, who quit the government over its move to the right.
According to Jacques Hennen and Gilles Verdez, authors of "Manuel Valls, Secrets of a Destiny", the media-savvy politician has long harboured presidential ambitions.
A long-time mayor of Evry, a gritty southern suburb of Paris, Mr Valls has four children. His second wife is a violinist.
Filmed by D8 television in an Evry market in 2009, before being in government, he was criticised for saying there were not enough "whites" around and this was giving the wrong image of his town.
From 1997 to 2001, Mr Valls served as communications director to Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin under President Jacques Chirac.
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