First return and first upheavals for the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes). The latest shock was felt on Wednesday September 13, on franceinfo, when Fabien Roussel again criticized the position of his left-wing partners, considering that many of them “defends[aient] the right to laziness”. Three days earlier, the PCF deputy from the North had already triggered an outcry within his camp with opposition between “the labor left” and that “benefits”.
Since the birth of the union of the left, in the spring, the communist continues to create a stir within this alliance, of which he is a member in the National Assembly. “It’s not newreminds Mathieu Gallard to franceinfo. He had already stood out with his vision of meat or his presence at the police demonstration in May 2021. This gives him high media visibility, while the PCF is in decline”explains the director of studies at the Ipsos institute.
On the left, the irritation grows as the former presidential candidate goes on to take singular positions. “It’s provocationpoints out LFI MEP Manon Aubry. Fabien Roussel is betting that he will exist by distinguishing himself from the rest of the left, unlike Olivier Faure. But it’s a losing bet, and it’s not the first time for him.” “In trivial terms, it pisses me off”loose the young deputy LFI Damien Maudet about the outings of his communist colleague.
“Fabien Roussel is on the sidelines of the Nupes. We take note of it.”
Manon Aubry, LFI MEPat franceinfo
Another member of the left alliance, François Ruffin, has also just shaken up his political family with a very commented outing on the electorate of his camp. “If she wants to win back this popular electorate from the France of the ‘yellow vests’, from the France of the roundabouts, from peripheral France”the left must “Finding the Words” and “the priorities”he warned on France Inter, Tuesday, September 6.
But the Picard parliamentarian has “more than a doubt” on the intentions of the Nupes in view of the score achieved in his region by the RN, even evoking “signs of abandonment”. “I am here so that the value of work returns to the left”, advocates François Ruffin. This is what earned him to be compared to Fabien Roussel for a few days.
“With the ‘work value’, François Ruffin takes up this music a little from a left of the right, within the reformist left. It is regrettable.”
A green MPat franceinfo
This rapprochement is not really to the taste of François Ruffin: on Wednesday, the LFI deputy from the Somme attacked his counterpart from the North on Twitter, complaining about the “kiss of death” that the latter gives him “at regular intervals”.
“Ruffin says the same!” It has become a classic: Roussel gives me the kiss of death at regular intervals! We agree, perhaps, on the diagnosis, but not on the horizon: is it a question of dividing the people? Or collect it?https://t.co/Z1eUjfKtc8
— Francois Ruffin (@Francois_Ruffin) September 14, 2022
“When I see that, I tell myself that Fabien tried to play close with François, but they are not at all in the same position”, evacuates Damien Maudet, former assistant to the LFI deputy, who became a parliamentarian last June. Do the two deputies from Hauts-de-France have such different attitudes? “They have the same objective: to bring the popular categories and the peripheral areas to the left”summarizes Mathieu Gallard.
“In contrastcontinues the sounder, they disagree on how to achieve this end. François Ruffin does it in a populist sense, with a people/elite division, to say that the people need to be defended. For his part, Fabien Roussel positions himself outside the nails of the ideological framework of the left. “The left should lead the cultural battle on our values and not go hunting in other lands”extends the ecologist Marine Tondelier to franceinfo.
In the midst of these debates which agitate the left, he is a figure who is slow to take a step back, five months after his failure in the presidential election. Back from vacation, Jean-Luc Mélenchon called on Saturday the dissonant voices of the Nupes, like François Ruffin and especially Fabien Roussel, to “stop the whining”. “Certainly, we must always do more, but we have become the first party of the unemployed, precarious, young people under 35, of urban centers, we are the people of the humiliated and oppressed”welcomed the former boss of the LFI deputies at the Fête de l’Humanité.
During the big left raout, in Essonne, the leaders of the Nupes, including Fabien Roussel, avoided getting angry in public on the issue of work. It will nevertheless be one of the hot topics of the new school year, with the planned reform of unemployment insurance by the government. And to better prepare the lively debates on this text, as on the 2023 budget or pensions, the left-wing deputies will meet for a working seminar on Tuesday, September 27, according to information from franceinfo confirming that of LCI and the JDD.
In this context of a busy social return, the left-wing parties can hardly count on the support of the unions: the latter have not succeeded in agreeing with the Nupes on a common date for mobilization against the high cost of living, an initiative ardently defended by Jean-Luc Mélenchon scheduled for October. But the mobilization is shunned by the trade unions, which are already planning two days of mobilization on September 22 and 29. As for the socialists and environmentalists, they are currently extremely cautious on this “great march”, for fear of attacking the unions.
At odds with the central trade unions, agitated by deep debates on work, does the Nupes risk breaking up during its first parliamentary return? “Faced with the reforms carried out by the executive, there should be a united frontanticipates political scientist Rémi Lefebvre. The real tests will be the degree of social conflict at the start of the school year and especially the Europeans of 2024.” The election will only take place in twenty months, but the left was quick to divide on this question: to the “rebellious”, who say they are in favor of a single list for the partners of the Nupes, the ecologists answer that ‘they have every intention of going it alone, they who traditionally achieve good scores in these elections.
Finally, the prospect of the congresses of ecologists at the end of the year and of socialists at the beginning of next year is not really a factor in easing tensions. Within the left, now united with the National Assembly, the subjects of division are not lacking for the coming months.