The reflex was epidermal. Or rather, it was a return fire as only the left knows how to do with its own comrades. Target ? Fabien Roussel. Responding to BFM’s question “should we have controlled more […] those who arrive to work in France”, the boss of the Communists assured that it was indeed necessary to be “more firm.” Two words, without ideas or substantive proposals, which ulcerated the rest of the Nupes as much as they delighted the National Rally.Even the leader of the LR deputies, Olivier Marleix, hailed a “position which was that of the Communists and part of the left for decades”.A kiss of death which pushed Fabien Roussel to correct itself, quickly after the issue.
However, it has been understood for years that immigration is not an inflammable subject on the left, but a volcanic one. And no matter that this theme figures prominently in the pile of French concerns, the left, whether rebellious, socialist or ecologist, carefully dodges it. Nothing, neither production nor debate of ideas on the question, just a few nudges from Manuel Valls – “the irreconcilable lefts” or from Arnaud Montebourg who, running behind Eric Zemmour during the last presidential campaign, proposed to temporarily block private money transfers to countries that “refuse to take back” their illegal immigrants.
“Moral fault”
Since Nupes is Nupes, there is no exception to this dichotomy : slamming words or anathemas. Fabien Roussel, with this step aside on immigration, feeds his ego showdown with Jean-Luc Mélenchon by using an old political maneuver: to transgress in order to exist. “It is not responsible for a man on the left to use immigration to turn it into a politician’s business”, deplores the socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte. Or this communist, not really Rousseau: “What Fabien said is not a political error, it is a moral fault.” So much for the atmosphere.
The recent BVA study for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, published on Monday, does not help the affairs of the left, even slapping some certainties among some. We learn that nearly one out of two left-wing sympathizers judges that there are too many immigrants in France. We also read that 51% of rebellious sympathizers and 50% of EELV share the same feeling as that of the RN on the question. While left-wing parliamentarians have proclaimed their opposition to the first measures of the asylum and immigration bill, left-wing supporters interviewed by BVA approve of a good part of them. What to install a new paradox between the opinion of left and its representatives – the deputies of Nupes – which tear and close the eyes on the question.
“There is a reality that the elected officials of Nupes do not seem to want to see”
For Philippe Brun, PS deputy for Eure, former supporter of Arnaud Montebourg during the presidential campaign and often criticized within the pink house for his more chevènementist than socialist positions, nothing new under the sun. “There is a vital need on the left to get out of two excesses: on the one hand those who believe that the Danish model, tough on immigration, is an El Dorado, and on the other the somewhat lax no-borders or what do I know. I do not believe in the Danish model, I do not believe that there is a way in the hardening in a large country of immigration like France, “said the Norman elected official.
As so often on the left, a subject hides a forest of others. “It is obvious that this is a subject that should no longer be bypassed on the left. That does not mean that the same answers must be given to it as the far right, but there is a reality that the elected representatives of the Nupes do not seem to want to see”, explains Adélaïde Zulfikarpasic, general manager of BVA France and author of the study. The cultural insecurity on which Marine Le Pen surfs by making immigration her favorite subject is born of the social, economic and sovereign insecurity that is flourishing in the country, and in particular in the peri-urban areas where the working classes live.
Class struggle or city center?
Here, in these territories of which the working-class North has become a totem, we point to a scapegoat for its misfortunes, its difficult ends of the month, the disappearance of public services, the flight of industries, etc. A feeling that some on the left describe as caricatural, but which is well and truly anchored in the minds of voters. Here, the left has collapsed from election to election, preferring to seduce voters from metropolitan areas, less sensitive to the subject of migration. The class struggle no longer interested the new left, dominated by its ecologist and rebellious margins. Marine Le Pen and the RN, who make their best scores there, only had to recover the broken pots and distill their identity matrix there.
“If this feeling is so entrenched, it is above all because irresponsible political leaders such as Marine Le Pen or Gérald Darmanin have abandoned all realistic discourse to talk only of fantasies, of figures. It is a distorted electoral business We have to get out of this, Arthur Delaporte gets annoyed. Immigration has been, is and will remain a geopolitical reality. Everyone avoids the real subject: integration. What means for reception? How much money for to integrate ?” If the Socialists have already opened a working group on the subject, chaired by Boris Vallaud, the environmentalists and the rebellious have not rushed to the gate.
The theme hardly interests them, except François Ruffin. The rebellious, always against his political family, has made immigration his next “piece”, which he has been cooking for months. A work almost finished which should not please his comrades. He believes that if the left wishes to return to the center of the game one day, it can no longer afford to close its eyes or block its ears on this file. “I’m not a no border,” he repeats. Ruffin has seen the electorate on the left, yesterday and today, harden, so he wants, in the words of one of his friends, “to beef up his game without running behind Le Pen”. It’s understood: opinion is a muscle that needs to be worked.