At the PS, the painful emancipation of Jean-Luc Mélenchon-L’Express

At the PS the painful emancipation of Jean Luc Melenchon LExpress

Philippe Brun is a tired, and patraque deputy. The body dropped after days of negotiations with the government to achieve a non-censorship agreement, two weeks of discussion in the National Assembly on the budget, this joint joint commission with the senators to land the text or even these hours of debate within the Socialist Party on the interest of not bringing down the Bayrou government. And there were also these dozens of passages on TV to make the after-sales service of the socialist choice, a disagreement with the partners of the new Popular Front who deposited, under the aegis of LFI, a motion of censorship. The deputy of the Eure does not regret anything, always more convinced of having avoided, he says, “the choice of instability”. Since the beginning of January, he has also been chaining the greeting ceremonies in his constituency. In thirty days, he attended forty-four of them. He says: “All those I met, business leaders as association presidents, told me the same thing: you have to move forward, have a budget, not censor.”

This did not prevent the same PS deputies from depositing … a motion of censorship. A article 49.2 which has nothing to do with the budget and allows socialists to launch a “spontaneous” censorship procedure. Understand who can. A strategy that is thus summarized at the PS: do not bring down the budget but bring down the government. A “synthesis” so as not to get angry with the minority of socialist deputies who pleaded to slash François Bayrou and his ministers. Wednesday, February 5, in the National Assembly, a good fifteen PS deputies hesitated until the last moments to censor the budget and the government. Only eight did it. Group discipline won, but for how long?

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Jospin on the phone

A non-censorship, the fruit of long months of negotiations within the PS. On July 8, the day after the legislative elections, when the new Popular Front came to the top of the election, winning 192 seats, Olivier Faure, Boris Vallaud and François Hollande all received the same call. Lionel Jospin on the phone. He does not want to spoil the moment, happy on the left, but the former Prime Minister sees further: “The right position is not to claim power, but to play the role of the opposition.” He warns them: the left will have no more possibility than others to carry out its program, even if it has been elected on it. Jospin repeatedly enjoins them not to censor at all costs, but to rather seek victories that will not be those, stricto sensu, of the NFP program. Six months later, two thirds of the parliamentary group will plead for this strategic line.

A framework of the PS, ardent defender of the NFP and the Union on the left, assumes this side of his own: “Censor in November, it is not the same thing that censor in February. Censor Bruno Retailleau and Aurore Bergé, It is not the desire that we are missing but we must be bourgeois to think that a budget, as bad as it is, is useless. The message is at the rebellious. They did not stop using the socialists’ decision not to censor. In their eyes, the choice of non-censorship is akin to a forfeiture vis-à-vis the program of the new Popular Front.

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“Judas only betrayed once”

“The PS has made a change of alliance. It is not infamous, I only observe it. They have not joined Emmanuel Macron and François Bayrou, but they are now the support and accomplices of their Politics “, considers Manuel Bompard, the LFI coordinator. One more strip between the PS and LFI, after weeks already spent to be unmmense by interposed media. In the rebellious telegram loops, we recycle ad nauseam A joke: “What is the difference between Judas and a socialist? Judas only betrayed once.” Since the socialists refused to vote the two censorship motions tabled by LFI on Wednesday, February 5, the rebellious attack at high speed on social networks, always targeting PS deputies a little more.

A poster putting Olivier Faure and Marine Le Pen (the RN did not vote the non-plus censorship) Dos-comme caused the ire of the rest of the NFP. “Never since 1945, even during the worst renunciations of the PS during the Algerian War […]a left-wing organization did not make a visual putting a fascist on the same plan and the leader of the PS, “launched Alexis Corbière, the former partner of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. been withdrawn and another, putting she Olivier Faure, Boris Vallaud, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella with an equal footing, has been modified. ‘would not have validated the visual in high places.

Hesitations

All blows are allowed to isolate the socialists. The LFI MP MATHILDE PANOT deputies proposed to the ecologist Benjamin Lucas to bring to the hemicycle the second motion of censorship relating to one of the components of the social security budget, which he refused. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in a public meeting in Angers, unilaterally expelled the Socialists of the NFP. Nevertheless, environmentalists and communists refuse to turn their backs on their comrades to the rose. What reassure Olivier Faure and his family, always attached to the union of the left.

In a press release published Thursday, February 6, the Greens and the Communists denounced the blows of the rebels carried to the socialists: “We refuse to let censorship draw the contours of belonging to our coalition. Our disagreements must not transform in detestation. ” And to accuse: “No republican party can and should be compared to the extreme right. This comparison leads to blurring the benchmarks and to trivialize the extreme right.”

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At the PCF and in environmentalists, there are the votes in hemicycle, and the unsaid, which is murmur just in the ear of some. With the exception of Delphine Batho, all the deputies of the environmental group voted for censorship on Wednesday but more than a dozen of them hesitated to press the button. Among them, the deputies Evé Sas, Jérémie Iordanoff, Dominique Voynet or Marie Pochon. “I continue to think that the government is not legitimate, because its perimeter does not correspond to the results of the elections. I was also scalded by the week when François Bayrou played C *** by giving the point to RN speaking of migratory submersion, explained Iordanoff just before the vote of the motion.

The rebellious storm passes, and the socialists hold their teeth. The episode has shown, once again, that the “strategic autonomy” strategy of socialists strengthens them. The good score of Raphaël Glusckmann – who multiplied the criticisms targeting the rebellious – to the Europeans, the rebirth of a parliamentary group with 66 deputies (double the previous legislature) … so many elements which convince Olivier Faure and his that the socialist affirmation within the NFP involves a confrontation with Jean-Luc Mélenchon but not a divorce. A divide to dose, and which supposes major communication deviations.

Vaudeville

Should we break with rebellious everywhere, all the time? Socialist Jérôme Guedj says “that there would never again be an alliance between LFI and the PS”. However, a few days earlier, deputy Philippe Brun, said, on Sud Radio, wish the victory of the list of Louis Boyard on which was a candidate who, on October 7, 2023, wrote on Twitter: “Shame on France who dared Qualified (sic) The Palestinian resistance of ‘terrorist’. And repeated it at the end of August at the end of August: “Hamas is a movement of resistance against a terrorist state that commits a genocide.”

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“Strategic autonomy does not mean the breakdown of links. If there is a dissolution tomorrow, I want the renewal of the NFP,” explains Laurent Baumel, PS deputy close to Olivier Faure. A feeling that shares a lot to the PS, especially the deputies who did not vote for censorship. The vast majority of them refuse to embark on a solo adventure which would see them oppose a list of union of the left. A half-word shared analysis to rebellious France, despite the appearances and threats of management to present candidates against the socialists who refused censorship. Union is a fight, as much as an endless vaudeville.

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