one year after LFI’s positions, the left continues to deal with Jean-Luc Mélenchon

The union of the left came close to exploding due to the positions of La France insoumise the day after the Hamas attacks in Israel, on October 7, 2023. A strategy of dividing the rebellious leader who, a year later, did not yet not excluded from the race.

For many, the rebellious leader was on the verge of becoming the pariah of the left a few months ago. In question, the controversial position of his movement after the attacks of October 7. Barely hours after the events, La France insoumise published a press release which contrasted with the shock of the images of the Hamas attack in Israel. It is not a question of terrorism, but of“armed offensive”reflecting the idea of ​​a conflict between two regular armies. The following days, MP Danièle Obono described Hamas as “resistance movement” and Jean-Luc Mélenchon even ended up being accused of anti-Semitism after several tweets.

Within the Nupes, there is a rupture. The Socialist Party, the Communists cut their ties with LFI, the party is criticized and the Macronists take it out of the“republican arch”. “Many have tried to kill Jean-Luc Mélenchonremembers a rebel, but it is clear that they did not succeed.” Paradoxically, it is the dissolution which allows La France insoumise to emerge from its isolation, with a new union of the left, electoral, the New Popular Front.

Since then, left-wing party leaders have kept their distance, giving the impression that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is isolated in this new union. We hear it less, the rebels have lost deputies and the socialists have regained weight. However, no NFP leader has condemned the rebel leader’s call to “put Palestinian flags everywhere” in universities in response to a circular.

Faced with this silence, the left responds that“We are not going to comment on everything Jean-Luc Mélenchon says”. But many are thinking of a possible dissolution in 9 months. According to several projections, the divided left risks collapsing. We will therefore have to continue to do with La France insoumise, and therefore with its leader, who, according to an elected environmentalist, has made himself indispensable to the left with his positions on the Middle East.

By making Gaza a political marker, Jean-Luc Mélenchon offers himself a “absolute joker” according to this same source. For the left forces “not being with LFI comes back, according to her, to be considered pro-Israel, pro-colonialist”. It is therefore difficult for the left to get rid of the former presidential candidate, who is increasingly hated in opinion surveys. This is how someone close to the number 1 environmentalist Marine Tondelier sums up the insoluble equation: “LFI loses its ability to win, but we cannot win without LFI”.