We had not heard this song in a Socialist Party event for a long time. Before the speech of the first secretary Olivier Faure, Saturday August 27, at the summer campus of the PS, the militants of the Young Socialists land on the forecourt of the Halle aux grains, in Blois (Loir-et-Cher). Flags and megaphone in hand, they sing in chorus The International, historical anthem of the communists and the proletarian left. Amazing? They retort: “It’s normal now, we are the Nupes!”
This was indeed the ambition of these PS summer schools: “Towards a New Socialist Party”, proclaims the banner at the entrance. What it does not say is that it is with Nupes, the alliance of socialists, communists, ecologists and “rebellious people”, born during the legislative elections, that the party leadership wants write a new page in its history. “We have been enemy brothers and sisters, we even fought each other violently at times, but together we managed to find the voice of compromise”welcomes Olivier Faure, welcoming the ecologist Yannick Jadot and the elected LFI Clémentine Autain and Alexis Corbière for a round table on the future of Nupes.
A feat that seems to convince the socialist activists present in Blois who chanted “Olivier! Olivier! Olivier!” when the first secretary of the PS entered the scene. Olivier Faure intends to surf in the months to come on this image of winner who would have straightened the socialist rose. After the calamitous electoral sequence of the presidential election and after having somehow saved the furniture in the legislative elections, the Socialist Party must, at the beginning of next year, perhaps, choose a new first secretary and above all decide its political line for coming years.
Still it is necessary that everyone speaks to each other: which is not won. Witness the visit, almost on the sly, of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, to the pot of the socialist federation of the capital. The city councilor took care not to appear alongside the first secretary and the Nupes executives gathered a hundred meters away. “Do you realize, she was not even officially invited by the party, laments one of the relatives of the mayor of Paris, she was still our presidential candidate! It’s shameful!”
So the knives are getting sharper in view of the congress. The firmness, the violence, some will say, of the leadership of the party during the conclusion of the agreement of the new left alliance, has left its mark. Some elephants, cantors of social democracy, even of social liberalism, are fervent opponents of the Nupes agreement and any form of alliance with La France insoumise. “We are orthogonal on all LFI positions”summarizes behind the scenes one of them.
A block opposition, which prompted Hélène Geoffroy, almost historic rival of Olivier Faure, and mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin, to bring together journalists to announce that she would be a candidate, once again, for the post of first secretary. “There is a space for us between La France Insoumise and the center rightshe wants to believe. We often talk about the militants who would have returned to the party from the Nupes, we never talk about all those who left!
At his side, names that recall the five-year term of François Hollande and the PS of the 2000s: François Khalfon, Patrick Menucci or even Philippe Doucet. But the most emblematic remains Jean-Christophe Cambadélis. The former first secretary of the PS even brandished a threat: in the event of an alliance with the “rebellious” for the European elections of 2024, he will launch his own list of “republican and European left”.
Because this is also the question, is the Nupes intended to continue in the Europeans, and after? In front of the microphones, “It’s too early to be decided”we explain. “I don’t really believe in it, but we will do everything to get there”blows one of those who say he is in favor of it. Because even if we fail, we will have perpetuated the mechanism of union. And that’s the only thing that matters: if we want to win in 2027, we will have to do it with the whole left, and only one candidate.”
Between these two lines, Olivier Faure seems to have made his choice: “It was the voters who decided, the anti-Nupes dissidents were almost all harshly beaten.” However, the discourse has changed vis-à-vis the critical voices against the alliance on the left. Witness this image, not seen for a long time: Carole Delga, president of the Occitanie region, side by side with Olivier Faure on the stage of the summer campus.
Sign of a reconciliation? “The ‘rebellious’ have been built in opposition to us for years, it leaves tracesexplains Olivier Faure, the page must be turned for those who were in doubt.” Carole Delga abounds: “The streak has passed, we both have the same objective: a strong PS.” The cuddle therapy undertaken by the first secretary seems to have borne fruit on some of the doubters during these socialist summer universities. What ensure him a re-election in a chair? Response to Congress.