On July 27, Raphaël Glucksmann said he was “proud” of the “powerful and beautiful” opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. On August 3, he was delighted with the “comeback” of the French judo team against Japan, as well as the feat, the following week, of the French volleyball players – gold medalists for the second time in a row.
This is pretty much all that the MEP, via his X account, has expressed publicly since the second round of the legislative elections. Except for a lengthy interview, published on July 10 in the pages of New Obsthe third man in the last European elections (13.83%), long at the centre of media attention, has temporarily withdrawn from the political arena.
“If she doesn’t negotiate beyond the NFP, we won’t get there”
And unlike the rest of the left, the political truce seems to be continuing for Raphaël Glucksmann, who is keeping a low profile about his learning vacation. A short week in Corsica, a few readings and other conversations with experts will have essentially marked his summer. “He is recharging his intellectual batteries,” people around him comment soberly. The former essayist has not said a word about Lucie Castets since she was designated for Matignon by the New Popular Front on July 23. “They have always exchanged regularly,” says a close friend of the aspirant. The left-wing Parisian elite is small: the two know each other and appreciate each other, it is said, “on a personal level.”
But it is time for political choices. Do you have more in common with a former Prime Minister hostile to the Insoumis, Mr. Glucksmann? Exchanges sometimes take place with Bernard Cazeneuve, while his name has been circulating recently for Matignon. “These are people who have a common ambition and vision for the Republic,” argues a socialist bigwig, aware of their relations. “Raphaël has more in common with the Cazeneuve method than with the Castets method,” analyzes another. “A matter of balancing the union, the former essayist specifies. You can propose a great person for Matignon, if she does not negotiate beyond the NFP, we will not get there.”
“As numerous as the ecologists”
After all, neither Glucksmann nor his movement Place publique took part in the discussions on the casting of the NFP. Too many blows to take, for a project that never convinced the former essayist and his friends. In the aftermath of the dissolution, they still gave the coalition half-hearted support, trying with difficulty to hold their own against the Mélenchonists during the programmatic negotiations.
“What I saw was that the political apparatus took things back in hand in ten minutes,” he confided to the newspaper. The Worlda few weeks later. “I’m not going to lie to you: when discussions begin between parties, we don’t have the apparatus to deal with them,” he said earlier, The Obs. Lesson of the sequence: its time, if it ever comes, will be conditioned by the strength of its movement.
This is the new project for Raphaël Glucksmann and his supporters. Place publique, which claims nearly 10,000 members (“as many as the ecologists!”) wants to enter “a new dimension”, and will organize its first big gathering at the beginning of October. Rendezvous in Gironde, in the small town of La Réole, for this “political moment” which, they want to believe, “will participate in the structuring of the social-democratic space”.