It is even a question, quite simply, of finding a few reasons to still exist. A survival operation which is also a last chance operation. Consider that with 1.75% of the vote, Anne Hidalgo came far, very far from… Jean Lassalle, for example! An unimaginable humiliation for a party that has run the country half the time since 1981.
To survive, the socialists must face a succession of emergencies. The first is leadership. The first secretary of the party, Olivier Faure, has no intention of resigning. In the past, after each severe defeat, his predecessors gave way: Jean-Christophe Cambadélis in 2017, Harlem Désir in 2014, Michel Rocard in 1994 or Laurent Fabius in 1993. But not him. Olivier Faure may be accused by some, and by Anne Hidalgo herself, of not having frankly supported the candidate, he clings. What saves him for the moment is that a change of leader would obviously not be enough to cure the PS.
The other emergency that mobilizes the Socialists is to save their electoral skin in the June legislative elections. They only have 28 outgoing deputies and dream of keeping them. For that, they need allies. Olivier Faure called on the other left-wing parties and environmentalists to agree to support all outgoing deputies from the left. But La France insoumise has already answered him no. No question for the mélenchonistes to come to the aid of the last socialist deputies.
The political oxygen that the PS needs to rebuild itself, he hopes to find outside. This is why Olivier Faure calls on the forces of the left and environmentalists to build a “pact for social and ecological justice”. His predecessor, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis goes further. He advocates “self-dissolution” of the PS to prepare his “refoundation”. But on what basis?
The Socialists brandish the Republic, the fight against inequalities, the ecological transition, as many themes on which they are no longer driving forces on the left. At the polls, here they are sandwiched between Emmanuel Macron on one side, who was joined in the first round by many former voters and socialist leaders, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the other who asserted his leadership on the left. on a much more radical line. In view of this inventory, the real question is therefore whether, in France, social democracy has simply not had its day.