Less than four months before the European elections, the battle is burning between Clémentine Autain and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Accused of “sabotage”, the MP for Seine-Saint-Denis responded to the former presidential candidate.
Water in the gas. Since this Monday evening, La France Insoumise has perhaps reached the breaking point. Dialogue is finding it more and more difficult to establish itself, and key figures in the family no longer hesitate to publicly insult each other. Guest of France 5, the LFI MP for Seine-Saint-Denis Clémentine Autain responded to the latest statements by Jean-Luc Mélenchon accusing him of “sabotage” in the run-up to the European elections.
Autain regrets Mélenchon’s “exclusionary behavior”
“The words that are revealed in the darkness are not sabotage for the European campaign,” she said. Faced with the difficulties encountered by the left and in particular LFI for many months, Clémentine Autain wishes to “discuss something other than proposing (her) exclusion from France Insoumise”. The latter particularly regrets the “exclusionary behavior” of her former colleague.
As a reminder, on February 2, the former president of the LFI group in the National Assembly indicated in the Télégramme insoumise loop that “stabs in the back during campaign periods are not acceptable. Leaving (for her) would be better , more honest, more humanly respectful. The sabotage of Clémentine Autain must stop. Who hears saying, apart from the upper middle classes and journalists friends of war criminals, that we are going backwards?” he wrote according to the weekly. Since then, the rag has been burning between Clémentine Autain and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, less than four months before a European election in which the left-wing forces, divided, seem to be in difficulty.
“If we want to score, the best thing is to bring together LFI”
This Monday, LFI MP Clémentine Autain also regretted reading the latest polls for her political family in view of the June 9 deadline. Indeed, the list led by Manon Aubry is credited, for the moment, with around 7% of voting intentions. “If we want to score, the best thing is to bring together La France Insoumise and try not to alienate ourselves outside the fringes that could be acquired by us,” she explained.
We have understood it well, Clémentine Autain aims to bring together to “prevent macronia and its successors from continuing to harm us”, and to “bar the road to Marine Le Pen“. However, has LFI ever been so divided and away from the political class and the left? Will Jean-Luc Mélenchon hear its call? She notably called for favoring a “high level of responsibility” and “to be up to the situation”, still on the France 5 antenna. A message intended for the leaders of the party and undoubtedly, for Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself.
The birth of a new political group?
So, could this general cacophony lead certain LFI thinking heads to the creation of a new political group to secede? The dissensions between members are such that the idea does not seem any more absurd than any other. For a year, the historical rebels Alexis Corbière, Raquel Garrido, Danielle Simonnet and Éric Coquerel have been removed from the leadership of the party in favor of the Bompard-Panot duo, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s close guard. This is why, all these little people, accompanied by Clémentine Autain, even Sandrine Rousseau could see the birth of the idea of a revolt and a “new start” for the left.
In fact, on February 10, in Gagny (Seine-Saint-Denis), around a hundred Insoumis and ex-Insoumis activists gathered to demand less opacity within LFI.Tired of submitting to diktats from above, the grassroots activists of the party Jean-Luc Mélenchon launch this “call for a Sixth Republic at LFI”. An ironic nod to the project of the rebellious leader of a Sixth French Republic marked by a more direct democracy.However, there is no question of seceding, the activists intend to change things from the inside, without for the moment calling on any political figure in the group. For his part, the founder of the party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, refutes the birth of a rebellious “current” and defends the “gaseous” composition of La France insoumise, a movement crossed by resolutely diverse tendencies.