“You are a survivor” of the legislative elections, launched on July 7, Mathilde Panot to Elisabeth Borne, whose father is a survivor of the Auschwitz camp. Nine days later, the deputy La France insoumise du Val-de-Marne caused a new outcry on the occasion of the commemorations of the Vel d’Hiv roundup, by claiming on Twitter that Emmanuel Macron “does honor to Pétain”.
Faced with the indignation of part of the political class, even within the united left since the legislative elections, the president of the group La France insoumise at the National Assembly limits herself to “clarify” his highly criticized remarks. Enough to make her, in two highly publicized outings, one of the outstanding parliamentarians of this beginning of her term.
This is the style of Mathilde Panot, 33, patron saint of LFI deputies since last October. “She has the gift of finding words that slam”summarizes Antoine Léaument, his friend, elected deputy in June. “At La France insoumise, we call that ‘words shells’: when you say them, the words explode and force you to think.” If the words of the thirty-something “clap” in the hemicycle at the start of the five-year term, they have been patiently germinating for fifteen years and his first associative commitments.
This native of Orleans, from the middle class, first likes to describe herself as “an activist”. First there were actions at ATD-Quart monde, which fights against poverty. Then at Unef, upon entering Sciences Po in 2008. On the Nancy campus, she recreated a local section of the student union close to the Socialist Party. “There, we wrote the draft book of militant actions that we were able to carry out later”, says Hadrien Clouet, now an LFI deputy. Mathilde Panot pushes the door of a local policy in 2011, before the first campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “She was not very hard to convince: she was looking for a militant place to use what she had done before and defend access to health and culture”continues his friend.
Under the patronage of François Delapierre, right arm of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who died in 2015, the student produces notes within the argumentation pole. “I noticed that we were dealing with someone lively, dynamic, who understood the political issues with a culture of action”, remembers Arnaud Le Gall, member since 2009 of the Left Party, the original name of the radical left movement. For the MP, “She has a salutary reflex in politics: she is obsessed with speaking out”.
In parallel with his commitment to VoisinMalinan association that leads a network of citizens in working-class neighborhoodsshe continued her commitment to the Left Party, which became the Movement for the Sixth Republic in 2014. And very quickly became a linchpin.
“In our movement, Mathilde Panot has been at the maneuver since 2015.”
Alexis Corbière, MP LFIat franceinfo
Based in Ivry (Val-de-Marne), she has held the position of “coordinator of support groups” since the winter of 2016. The “caravans of rights”, one of her ideas, are deployed in the summer next. “It was Mathilde who built the La France insoumise movement. This woman spent hours on it. I have total human confidence in her, she taught me things”said of her Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in June 2017.
Here she is at the heart of the second campaign of the former socialist, of which she is one of the proteges, like Manuel Bompard or Adrien Quatennens. Like these other young shoots of the “Mélenchon generation”, Mathilde Panot was convinced in the winter of 2017 to stand for legislative elections in Val-de-Marne. “At first, she wasn’t too keen, but all of Ivry’s friends pushed herremembers Hadrien Clouet. I said to him: ‘Obviously you have to go, you need profiles like yours in the Assembly!'”
On June 18, 2017, she became one of the 17 La France insoumise deputies and entered the National Assembly at only 28 years old. Very quickly, in the wake of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the noisy François Ruffin or Adrien Quatennens, “the activist” becomes a specialist in environmental issues within the small parliamentary group. To be heard, she does not hesitate to mock Nicolas Hulot, heavyweight of the government of Edouard Philippe.
And despite the certainty of seeing an LREM deputy chairing the Assembly, rather than the media Eric Coquerel or Alexis Corbière, it is this nuclear slayer that La France insoumise proposes for the perch, in September 2018. “We are grateful to Mathilde”justified Jean-Luc Mélenchon at the time, who boasted of his “extraordinary matters” addressed to ministers in the National Assembly.
Since her election, the discreet but offensive MP for Val-de-Marne has indeed made herself indispensable for the small battalion of La France insoumise, which multiplies the blows of brilliance in a hemicycle squared by the macronists.
The parliamentary ascent continues for the young thirty-year-old, who becomes vice-president of the LFI group in June 2019. A reward, to the detriment of the other “rebellious”? “The idea was for Jean-Luc Mélenchon to be only on strong words and not on everyday life. At one point, it was not what motivated him the most”, replaces Alexis Corbière. At the heart of the parliamentary machine, Mathilde Panot continues to whip. “She belongs to a generation of deputies, like François Ruffin or Adrien Quatennens, who work all the time”underlines Damien Maudet, former parliamentary assistant to François Ruffin who became a deputy in June.
“She sleeps little and manages to get an hour of sleep when she can.”
Hadrien Clouet, LFI MPat franceinfo
To make her mark in a group that wants to be heard, Mathilde Panot has her method. Few interviews, many social networks and videos: the Ile-de-France MP applies the movement’s roadmap to communicate better than any “rebellious”. “The buzz is not negative. It’s done on purpose. The images help to catch the spirits”she defends with LCP, in December 2020. After being qualified as “fishmonger” by an LREM parliamentarian to the Assembly, in February 2021, she makes fun of this sexist remark by going to meet a real fishmonger, in Morbihan. The “day between fishmongers” at the initiative of the deputy is obviously relayed on YouTube.
A new stage is looming in October 2021, when Jean-Luc Mélenchon lets go of the reins of the parliamentary group to devote himself 100% to the presidential campaign. Mathilde Panot takes over and becomes, at 32, the youngest president of a political group in the history of the National Assembly. “She has the qualities for that: she knows how to do useful action for the population and has the argumentative training, with a Marxist-Republican line. And it’s her job to manage problems”praises Hadrien Clouet. “Jean-Luc Mélenchon had a natural authority over the group, but she imposed herself as the very structured spokesperson for our collective”confirms Alexis Corbière.
“Structure” : the word also comes back to the partners on the left with whom LFI joined forces within Nupes, in the spring. “We feel that it is someone who has worked”supports Christophe Clergeau, who managed for the Socialist Party the negotiations on the program of the electoral alliance. “She has an ideological backbone, a good knowledge of the files and a certain capacity for work”, he acknowledges. With a downside: “She has a very parliamentary and very Jacobin vision of public action, with the state everywhere. Basically, she lacks this consideration of the implementation of decisions.”
This does not prevent her from being re-elected in Val-de-Marne in June, with 67% of the vote. And to extend, in the process, to the presidency of the parliamentary group of La France insoumise. Now, with the passage of the LFI group from 17 to 75 deputies, Mathilde Panot has acquired a new status. The kingpin of the commando led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon has become “general of a militant army”illustrates the young deputy Louis Boyard.
“The General” has a mission for this five-year term: to make Nupes and LFI in particular the first opposition force to Emmanuel Macron’s camp, facing the parliamentarians of the National Rally. For this, she has “printed a style” with his troops, according to Alexis Corbière. “After listening to everyone, she has the particular role, as a last resort, to decide. She knows how to do it, with an excellent balance between firmness and empathy”, greets Arnaud Le Gall. Louis Boyard engages: “She’s not lying to you and jumping around.”
“When she says no, it’s no. But if we manage to convince her, she changes her mind. She has no ego.”
Louis Boyard, MP LFIat franceinfo
“No ego”according to his supporters, but “an image of a savage, a harpy” with her detractors, as she confided to Releaseearly August. “But so much the better if they are a little afraid of me. They may turn their tongues seven times in their mouths before insulting or denigrating us. And we won’t let anything pass”, she adds. This notably involves a “march against expensive living” planned for the beginning of October, to make life difficult for Emmanuel Macron. “Sometimes you have to mark the conflictuality and sometimes we are cunning and we try to nag them. In general, Mathilde is more about political positions that create conflictuality”supports Antoine Léaument.
Member of Parliament, group vice-president then group president… For five years, Mathilde Panot has not experienced any clashes in her rise within the opposition. “Given his age and his talentanticipates Alexis Corbière, she’s going to continue to be front and center, that’s for sure.” Only ? At LFI, where talking about personal ambitions is hardly compatible with dedication to the collective, we remain very cautious. Especially that “Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not dead”, recalls Antoine Léaument. Nevertheless, “there is a subject that arises, because he does not wish to be a candidate in a fourth presidential election”. But at the AmFis, where the “rebellious” meet from August 25 to 28, it is indeed Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and not Mathilde Panot, who will conclude the summer high mass of his political family.