The national secretary of the PCF pleaded on Sunday for a “new type of union”. But the leaders of the left are having a hard time getting rid of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s influence.
Is there life after Nupes? And above all a life without Jean-Luc Mélenchon? This is the question that torments the partners of France Insoumise, and even certain Insoumis. Fabien Roussel got his feet wet on Sunday October 15. No doubt because he has recently been the main target of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s vindictiveness. One of his followers, MP Sophia Chikirou, flatly compared him to the collabo leader Jacques Doriot. Fabien Roussel judges that “the left is not up to the task” and that the Nupes became “deadlock”. He advocates another “gathering” more open to exchange, to mutual respect, like, he says, the inter-union movement which led the movement against pension reform.
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The other left-wing parties could follow it; basically, they all make the same observation. The excesses of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, his brutality, his desire to “conflict everything”lead the left into the wall. “A pseudo-leader who spends his time provoking everyone with unwanted tweets”, said Marine Tondelier this weekend. The national secretary of the Ecologists even wanted her Twitter to be cut off. In short, Jean-Luc Mélenchon returned to the status of Donald Trump, a time deprived of Twitter after the invasion of the Capitol. At the beginning of July, the leader of the Insoumis had endorsed the riots in France by refusing to call for calm. Since then, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has gone even further by stubbornly refusing to describe Hamas as “terrorist”, guilty of having massacred Israeli civilians by the hundreds. An attitude condemned, according to polls, by an overwhelming majority of French people, and even by several Insoumis deputies like François Ruffin and Alexis Corbière.
A brutal and radical line that condemns the left to defeat
And yet, the leaders of the left are having a hard time getting rid of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s influence. Some owe their position to him like, for example, Olivier Faure. The first secretary of the PS is tempted to break, but if he does, he proves his internal opponents right and could lose his place. To save time, he therefore postponed the PS national council scheduled for Saturday, officially because of the Arras attack. Basically, this hesitation illustrates the trap set for the left by Jean-Luc Mélenchon: his brutal and radical line condemns it to defeat, but it cannot win either if it sinks into divisions.