Elections in France | The left torn, Zemmour and Le Pen at loggerheads

(Paris) A left more than ever deadlocked and an extreme right at loggerheads between Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour: the disorder was palpable Monday among opponents of Emmanuel Macron in a stable presidential campaign in voting intentions.

Won by Christiane Taubira, the Popular Primary, an unprecedented citizens’ initiative in France bringing together nearly 400,000 voters, had the ambition to bring together a left stuck at a historically low score in the polls, with only a quarter of the voting intentions.

But it ultimately only added confusion to the division.

The vibrant calls for a “united and standing left” by Christiane Taubira, after her victory on Sunday evening, were unsurprisingly shattered against a wall of refusal from her rivals: the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the ecologist Yannick Jadot, the socialist Anne Hidalgo and communist Fabien Roussel.

M^me Taubira contacted all his competitors on Monday, according to his entourage. She “told them that the vote in the popular primary indicated a powerful yearning for union,” and that one could not sit on the vote of 400,000 people.”

But they declined the offer of the former Minister of Justice and already a candidate in 2002 (2.32% in the first round).

The candidate of the La France insoumise party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, notably responded with a text message made public, in which he said he had “a saddened memory of our previous contacts. I believed you when you regretted the number of applications. Now you add yours. But I only want my confidence, ”he regrets.

“One more candidacy”, also replied the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, also by text message.

The Socialist Party threatened with disappearance

By taking points from Yannick Jadot and especially from Anne Hidalgo, M^me Taubira, has de facto weakened its closest rivals, in particular the Socialist Party (PS), the former government party which gave two heads of state – François Mitterand and François Hollande – to the country and is now threatened with extinction by having fallen below 5% in the polls.

For the PS, the time for reckoning even seems to be approaching: “If it takes a few more votes from Anne Hidalgo, either the PS disconnects Anne Hidalgo and rallies to Christiane Taubira, or the PS simply risks disappearing”, estimated Monday political scientist Brice Teinturier on France Inter.

M^me Hidalgo could however boast of the rallying on Monday of part of the campaign team of ex-candidate Arnaud Montebourg, who had thrown in the towel in mid-January.

“Kind of panic”

Within the far right, whose electoral weight is more substantial with around 30% of voting intentions, “betrayals”, murderous little phrases and other family quarrels now punctuate each day of the campaign.

“Lie”, “perjury”, “sabotage”, Marine Le Pen did not have words harsh enough on Monday evening for those who intend to join the campaign of her rival in the wake of several recent defections to the National Rally and the procrastination of her niece Marion Maréchal.

“The lie which consists in making believe that we are in a team, sabotaging it from the inside, and playing for the opposing team, that disgusts the French”, she said on Europe 1.

Targeting Nicolas Bay in particular, she felt “that the best for everyone is that now he explains himself clearly”.

M^me Le Pen accused Éric Zemmour of offering “many things. Investitures, positions, promises. “Means, in any case, and financial means, yes that is obvious,” she said.

For his part, Éric Zemmour had mocked earlier Monday a “kind of panic” at the RN, and refuted the allegations of having given “a penny to anyone”.

For the former political columnist, who congratulated himself on Friday for having spent “a great week”, it started rather badly with the announcement of the opening by the Paris prosecutor’s office of an investigation for rape targeting his events director Olivier Ubéda.

Macron will soon formalize his candidacy

Meanwhile, the presidential majority is preparing the entry into the campaign of President Emmanuel Macron, given the lead in the first round for several months with 24-25% of the voting intentions.

He has “a window of opportunity to declare himself a candidate between February 10 and 20”, says those around him, who however stresses that “the health issue must be over and that we are neither in an international crisis nor in full European sequence” such as the European Union-African Union international summit of 17 and 18 February.

The campaign site, avecvous2022.fr, was already launched last week, inviting Internet users to “make their voices heard”.

And the “Youth with Macron” presented their proposals at the start of the evening at the Paris headquarters of the La République en Marche party.

An IFOP-Fiducial poll published on Monday shows remarkable stability in voting intentions for the April presidential election, with no candidate having benefited from momentum since the start of the year.