Paris’s embattled Socialist mayor told her many critics to “f—” off on Thursday in an apparent rush of blood to the head after the success of the Olympics.
Delivering the offensive phrase in English in a highly undiplomatic outburst during an interview with Le Monde, Anne Hidalgo said: “F— reactionaries, f— the extreme Right, f— all those who want to shut us in a war of everyone against everyone.”
The newspaper reported that Ms Hidalgo’s press officer was appalled at the expletive-laden tirade but that the mayor carried on regardless, apparently carried away by the gushing domestic and international praise for the Games.
“When there is a shared feeling of fraternity, sorority, of humanism … we Parisians, we French people, are proud,” she said.
Ms Hidalgo, 65, who, in 2014, was the first woman to become Paris mayor and was re-elected in 2020, is a divisive figure who has come under frequent fire for her drive to cut traffic and extend green spaces.
Critics say her penchant for ugly urban architecture has defaced the City of Lights and that the capital has become grimy and rat-infested.
She suffered national humiliation when she ran as the Socialist party candidate for the Elysée two years later and obtained a paltry 1.7 per cent of the vote.
She also infuriated Tony Estanguet, the Paris Olympic committee chief, earlier this year by warning that work on the capital’s public transport system would not be ready in time for the Games – an attitude he slammed as defeatist.
Parisian residents fled the capital
However, all such criticism vanished as the French and the rest of the world warmed to the Games, widely dubbed a resounding success even if almost half of Parisian residents fled the capital before it started.
Some of those who remained even thanked her during a walkabout on the banks of the Seine this week. Last month, nine days before the Games opened, she had plunged into the river to prove the water was clean enough for swimming events.