THE French have an expression, l’appel du vide (“the call of the void”), to refer to the compulsive urge to do something self-destructive, such as leap off a cliff. It captures the frisson felt in contemplating the act, but resisting it. President François Hollande, however, seems to have surrendered. In a 662-page book published last month by two journalists, based on recorded interviews with the Socialist president, Mr Hollande insults all and sundry: judges, footballers, his own ministers and more. That a leader seeking re-election could engage in such a politically suicidal exercise, six months before France’s presidential election, has left his allies dumbstruck and his political future in freefall.

It was surprising enough that a sitting president in such turbulent times chose to meet the reporters, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, fully 61 times over four years. Often they chatted at the Elysée Palace; sometimes he dined at their place. More shocking was what Mr Hollande said. He called the judiciary a “cowardly institution”, the national football team “badly brought-up kids”, the poor “toothless”. He belittled the stature of Claude Bartolone, the Speaker of parliament, and the education of Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, his own education minister, neither of whom—unlike Mr Hollande—went to the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the elite civil-service graduate school. En passant, Mr Hollande admitted to having authorised “at least” four targeted killings by the French secret services.

The damage was instant. Within days, the president dispatched eight letters of apology—to bodies representing judges, magistrates and prosecutors—claiming, creatively, that his comments bore “no relation to the reality of my thinking”. A poll taken after the book’s publication recorded his approval rating at just 4%. In the past, each time Mr Hollande has dug himself into a hole, his friends have helped him clamber back out. This time, they handed him a spade. Manuel Valls, the prime minister, spoke of his “anger” and his deputies’ “shame”. A wounded Mr Bartolone described his “stupefaction”: a president, he added, has an “obligation of silence”.

The French elected Mr Hollande in 2012 as as an antidote to the frenetic Nicolas Sarkozy, his centre-right predecessor. They wanted, to use Mr Hollande’s campaign slogan, a “normal” president. At times, notably after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist atrocities last year, Mr Hollande has looked the part. Yet despite his reputation for private charm, he has mostly failed to appear presidential. He does not make voters angry so much as indifferent. “I am the ghost of the Elysée,” he says in the book. Relations between Mr Hollande and French voters now look irreparable.

How did the president end up here? He suffers from “hyperconfidence”, suggests a former aide, which might explain his naive faith that the reporters would publish a less devastating book. This personality trait may yet lead Mr Hollande to run again, against all odds (and the desires of a growing list of Socialist deputies). With unemployment beginning to drop, and the economy doing a bit better, he could yet decide he has a chance. He must decide by December 15th, the deadline to stand for the party’s primary.

Yet even if Mr Hollande were to stand aside, polls suggest that the Socialists would perform disastrously in the presidential election’s first round, failing to make it to the second-round run-off. The party’s best alternative, Mr Valls, would still not beat either the centre-right candidate or the nationalist Marine Le Pen. The prime minister’s mistake, says a friend, was not resigning earlier this year to preserve his own political future. Mr Valls has begun to warn that the party could “exit” history. Faced with the prospect of annihilation, Mr Hollande would appear to have little choice but to give up. Unless, as the book suggests, he really is unafraid of the void.