For the first time in ages, the parties of the French left will present themselves united in the next legislative elections on 12th and 19th June next. Arrived third in the presidential elections behind Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon is about to complete an agreement which should allow the candidates of his formation, La France insoumise (LFI), but also to Europe Ecology the Greens (EELV), the Communist Party (PC) and the Socialist Party (PS) to run under the same banner. Subject to strong internal dissension and almost on the verge of implosion, only the latter has still not ratified this agreement in which the “elephants” of the party see nothing less than the announced disappearance of the party of Léon Blum, Pierre Mendès France and Francois Mitterrand.
In this “New Popular Ecological and Social Union”, Jean-Luc Mélenchon says he sees the possibility that, despite the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, the left will obtain a majority in the National Assembly. The tribune even leaves hovering over his posters (“Mélenchon Prime Minister”) the idea that the legislative elections could elect him head of government. With the nuance that, according to the Constitution, only the president has the power to appoint the prime minister.
In these negotiations, the re-election of many deputies and the possibility of preserving a recognized group in the assembly are at stake for parties which, like EELV (4.6%) and the PS (1.7%), have bitten the dust at the presidential one. In 2017, despite his seven million votes in the second round, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had only 17 deputies elected. Even if the left has rarely been such a minority in the country and if LFI enjoys little local presence, this agreement could ensure a bloc of a hundred left-wing deputies, perhaps more. This could allow this new coalition to claim the role of opposition, especially since on the right no agreement seems possible between Le Rassemblement national, Reconquête and Les Républicains.
These negotiations also confirm the erasure on the left of social democracy in the face of a party that is not afraid to claim the revolutionary tradition. A first since, in the 1970s, the Socialist Party robbed the Communist Party of hegemony on the left.
Several LFI positions are in contradiction with those of the other parties, such as the abolition of nuclear power, the nationalization of many sectors of the economy, retirement at 60, the promotion of multiculturalism, “disobedience” to European treaties and withdrawal from NATO.
Break Consumed
But at the Socialist Party, nothing is going well. Since the first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, agreed to sit down at the negotiating table to save the seats of its 28 outgoing deputies, criticisms have not ceased to fuse. Many have seen it as the death warrant of a party that is dying today, but which still has many local elected officials.
In a long text published on Facebook, the former socialist minister Bernard Cazeneuve warned that he “could not, in conscience and in responsibility, remain in the party whose leaders will have forgotten what he founded and lost their compass”. The former first secretary of the PS Jean-Christophe Cambadélis did not hesitate to denounce “an OPA” (a public offer) on the whole of the left. “I think we made a mistake […] because Mélenchon’s program is a break with socialist history and because it is not practicable. It can unite neither the leftists nor the French. »
The break seems consumed between the deputation, younger and anxious to be re-elected, and those who are nicknamed the “barons”, starting with the former president François Hollande. He was the first to launch the rebellion since, he said, this agreement would call into question “the very principles which are the foundations of socialist commitment”.
The former deputy of Essonne and founder of SOS Racisme, Julien Dray, openly evokes a “political capitulation” and calls on the militants to “disobedience”. The president of the Occitanie region Carole Delga, the former secretary of state Hélène Geoffroy and the ex-minister Stéphane Le Foll do not hesitate to speak of “submission” and “surrender” either.
Tuesday evening, no agreement was yet in sight with the Socialists, several elected officials of whom did not wait for this agreement to enter the campaign. At the heart of the disagreements was the number of constituencies that the PS could claim today reduced to a bare minimum. “In reality, we are realizing that the lefts are not so irreconcilable,” said socialist spokesman Pierre Jouvet. A response to former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who has long theorized the existence of two “irreconcilable” lefts and who will be a candidate for Emmanuel Macron.
Revenge of Mélenchon
Among the points of agreement which are particularly reacting to the former socialist ministers, we find in particular the return of retirement to 60 years and the abolition of the El Khomri law on the work organization voted under the socialist government of François Hollande.
According to several observers, this agreement appears as revenge for the leader of LFI, who had slammed the door of the PS in 2008. Triumphant despite his defeat in the presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not hesitate to treat François Hollande of ” has-been » reproaching him for wanting « to stay on the quay » while the « train of History » is moving.
For “those who have exercised responsibilities in this great social democratic current in the country”, declared the president of the Modem, François Bayrou, allied with Emmanuel Macron, this agreement means “the end of everything they have done, the ruin of everything they wanted to do”.
According to a survey by the firm Cluster17, in the most favorable scenario, such a coalition could enable the left to win up to 34% of voting intentions on 12th June next. But how many deputies? This nobody knows, since only the candidates who will obtain 12% of the votes will qualify in the second round, which is likely to give rise to many triangular. Since the legislative elections take place two months after the presidential elections, a president has never been denied a majority in the National Assembly.