Wednesday January 10, Paris town hall. At the start of the year, Anne Hidalgo presents her traditional wishes to the press. The writers religiously note…. And Paris here, and Paris there, the Olympic Games and so on. The communist Fabien Roussel promised to come forward. Moreover, the Place du Colonel Fabien, where the PCF headquarters is located, will be greened! Green among the reds, what an idea. Here is the communist who finally arrives. Wonderful transition. “Another Fabien is arriving, and he is not yet a colonel.” We laugh out loud, hug, kiss. And happy New Year ! Hey, Yannick Jadot came too. He is a senator from Paris, nothing could be more normal. Click clack, a photo of the three, arm in arm. The union of unsuccessful left-wing presidential candidates?
Unhappy, Anne Hidalgo? Never ! The Olympics will go well, she is sure of it. Gabriel Attal at Matignon, that doesn’t reassure her. He will be neither Jean Castex nor Édouard Philippe, who he would almost miss. Attal has always had a grudge against her, bordering on disrespect, she says, even when he accused the Paris town hall of establishing a system of fraudulent rents. They all look the same, these Macronists. “He who betrays will betray…” Fortunately, Gérald Darmanin remains Minister of the Interior. “With him, it’s fluid. He knows politics through the exercise of mandates, and knows the respect that there must be between elected officials.” Translation: he would have made a better Prime Minister. In short, Anne Hidalgo is doing well at the start of 2024. “As long as I don’t hear about Didier Lallemand’s return, I’m fine…”
Glucksmann who?
Worried, Anne Hidalgo? A bit much. The Europeans look terrible. “The far right is high, very high, the danger is there. We do not have to rush headlong towards the predicted disaster. There is still time to react,” confides Anne Hidalgo to L’Express. Raphaël Glucksmann will appreciate… Raphaël who? Ah, the outgoing socialist MEP. Did she forgive him for not supporting her in the presidential election? One more in the long list of those who abandoned Anne Hidalgo in the open countryside in the socialist debacle of the 2022 presidential election… Politics has a hard tooth. It doesn’t matter that Glucksmann, who will carry the socialist list in the June election, has the wind in his sails in the polls. In Anne Hidalgo’s eyes, there is another path…
She spoke about it at length with Yannick Jadot, and pushed with environmentalists and her “socialist friends.” She is “convinced” that a common list between ecologists and socialists is a necessity, almost vital, for the Europeans. Such a union “could reach 20% and find itself ahead of the macronie” and this, she adds, “even if the list is led by environmentalists”. Raphaël Glucksmann will appreciate… Raphaël who already? Oh yes ! She murmurs: “I have not seen any collective construction around Raphaël Glucksmann… The question of the head of the list must not be closed.”
“The PS no longer functions democratically”
Such a gathering for the Europeans is still possible, and it would even be, she swears, “a major political event which would open the door to all opportunities”. In short, the beginning of the beginning of a gathering of the left, without LFI, with a view to the municipal elections of 2026 then the presidential election of 2027. This is his bet, which many other socialists share: to recover the orphaned electorate of the left and the center left who had persisted in voting for Emmanuel Macron’s party in the last European elections of 2019 but is now abandoning it. “There is anger in this electorate, a feeling of having been betrayed with the immigration law, and the appointment of Gabriel Attal will not change anything,” considers the city councilor of the capital. “A common list would be a political act which opens the doors to those voters who no longer find themselves with Macron and will not find themselves in a Mélenchonist offer.”
And what does Olivier Faure think about it? Anne Hidalgo doesn’t care. And the presidential ambitions – an open secret – of the Prime Secretary? “He ran after Mélenchon, so he cannot be the one who embodies the post-Mélenchon era for the orphan electorate,” she judges. And then the PS, you know… The old pink house is no longer a shadow of itself. “It no longer works in a democratic way,” she sighs, even deploring that local socialist elected officials no longer carry any weight in the system where, among environmentalists, they are much more considered. In the European elections, as in the municipal elections of 2026 or the presidential election the following year, the socialist label alone can no longer suffice. Hidalgo opens his arms to environmentalists. “We think the same thing, we have the same electorate!” What for ? A third application in Paris? A new presidential adventure? Laughter from the person concerned, who leaves doubts lingering: “I have the good fortune to be able to choose the moment when I will say what I wish to do for the future. I am the master of the clocks…”
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