‘Rain man’ to the rescue? France’s ex-president Hollande plots unlikely comeback

Once so deeply unpopular he had to give up running for a second term in office, former French president François Hollande has slipped back into the conversation ahead of next year’s Elysée Palace race, hoping voters put off by squabbling candidates will come to see him as a safe – if unexciting – pair of hands after a decade of Emmanuel Macron’s ‘disruptive’ presidency.