Socialist rebel Benoit Hamon and ex-PM Manuel Valls head for runoff in French left’s presidential primary

Benoit Hamon, a former Socialist government rebel, won the first round of a primary on Sunday and will meet ex-prime minister Manuel Valls in a runoff to decide who will be the candidate of the beleagured left in a French presidential election in spring.

Hamon, 48, a traditional leftwinger who was sacked from government by President Francois Hollande for criticising his economic policies, coasted to a comfortable win ahead of Valls, a former Hollande loyalist in government, according to partial results.

With the field now whittled down from seven candidates to two and Valls and Hamon set to meet mid-week for what could be a testy televised debate, the final outcome was hard to predict.

But former economy minister Arnaud Montebourg, who trailed in third place, gave Hamon, a party ally on the left, an advantage by criticising Valls’s pro-business policies and urging his supporters to vote for Hamon next Sunday.

Either way, opinion polls indicate that no Socialist candidate has much chance of getting beyond the first round of the election in April-May after five years of unpopular rule by Hollande.

The Socialist party, for decades one of the main political forces in France, has become marginalised as Hollande failed to bring high unemployment down and alienated left-wing voters with his economic policies.

But the Socialists’ final choice on January 29 could have an impact on the election fortunes of the front-runners for the Elysee - conservative Francois Fillon, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and popular independent Emmanuel Macron.