Sunday April 15, at the Stade de France. On the pitch, the XV of France is running behind the score. Rough scrum with the Springboks. The entrance is only fifteen meters away. It pushes, it hits. The supporters shout to motivate the pillars. “It’s gentler than within the Nupes.” People laugh in the aisle, and say again: “Go blues! Go blues!” The joke exploded in the stands, without really knowing who, Olivier Faure, Benoît Hamon, Marine Tondelier, Yannick Jadot or François Ruffin, started it. The elite of the left were invited by two socialists, the mayor of Saint-Denis Mathieu Hanotin and the president of 9-3 Stéphane Troussel. After the match, we mourned the defeat. And before kick-off, the fine team chatted about politics, about “post-Nupes”. Necessarily.
The first rebellious press release, the stubbornness of certain leaders, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the lead, to refuse for several days to denounce as “terrorist” the attack of the small Islamist group… For a week, the left has been suffocating, suffocated by the new controversies which have undermined the Nupes since the Hamas terrorist attack in the kibbutzim of southern Israel. “It’s not a coincidence that we invited these people,” says one of the hosts. “We have already been able to invite Raquel Garrido, Alexis Corbière or Clémentine Autain to other events. It’s easier with them to build something. We want to put people who have similarities in the same room.”
“Mélenchon hinders everything”
Build ? But build what? As the months passed, Nupes died under the Mélenchonist yoke. “This episode, on the conflict in the Middle East, is only the last in a long list which began at the time of the Quatennens affair, then with democracy within LFI and how, from one tweet on the fly, Mélenchon broke the strategy decided between the unions and the deputies to counter the pension reform, laments Boris Vallaud, leader of the socialist deputies. It has been months since Nupes has stopped functioning, through his fault . He hinders everything.” A sign of the times, it was Jérôme Guedj, the most rebellious of the socialist deputies, who opened Pandora’s box the day after the Hamas attack. The question of remaining in the Nupes “arises” now, he said. A godsend for Fabien Roussel who also tried to take a tangent, before being forced by his deputies not to break too hard, too quickly with Nupes.
The socialists were not choosy. The collaboration with LFI is on hold. An understatement. The PS group has decided to remove the mention “member of the Nupes intergroup” attached to its official name and will no longer participate in the weekly meeting between Nupes leaders, at the National Assembly. The one organized on October 10, the last one attended by the socialists, turned into a fiasco, once again. Once is not customary, Mathilde Panot only stayed a few minutes. Manuel Bompard, although so often diligent, preferred to commission his colleague Danièle Obono who attacked his partners, calling them “irresponsible”. And Cyrielle Chatelain replies “Ha, so the best defense is attack.” A bronze rule in the rebellious citadel.
The secret dinners of those “who want to do better”
If the Nupes has breathed its last, the desire for union remains. “Everyone knows that we have to move on,” explains Boris Vallaud. Actually, the “other thing” that everyone is talking about has already started. Nothing is coordinated, but a lot is phosphorous. There are those who meet at rugby, and others who chat more seriously, and not the least. The affair began in May, at the home of Julien Bayou, the environmentalist deputy, where we trimmed the fat, around a few glasses of wine, and sketched the future. Dinners that have lasted since then were supposed to remain secret, where we talk to each other on a human level, in good faith, far from the ambient chaos.
Around the table, unitarians from the start: the socialist Jérôme Guedj, the communists Elsa Faucillon and sometimes Sébastien Jumel, the rebellious Clémentine Autain, François Ruffin, Alexis Corbière and Raquel Garrido. “The small group of those who allow themselves to do better,” says one of the participants, repeating the words of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2022. “Something is born, between individuals. A sort of “enlightened avant-garde in favor of union,” reassures another. Last week, at the height of the crisis, the atmosphere was more heavy. What to do ? Break with Mélenchon? Slam the door of LFI? To do what ? Go where and with whom? One of the guests warned her comrades: “We are not doing all this to get into the PS wheel.” Other feasts are regularly organized with Autain, Ruffin, Faucillon and figures from the left including Johanna Rolland, the mayor of Nantes and number 2 of the PS, or even Boris Vallaud.
“It would take me ten minutes to fire them”
Sitting at the table at Casa Nova, a bar on the port of Marseille, Jean-Luc Mélenchon sips his grenadine through a straw. His slingers? Let them come and get him! “It’s unfair behavior but they’re not a problem. It would take me ten minutes to fire them but it’s better that they are inside than elsewhere,” he whispers, convinced that Ruffin, Autain, Corbière, Garrido, Simonnet and others so hate each other that they are incapable of forming a coalition. For months, the same Mélenchon has not hidden his annoyance. In Valencia this summer, he repeated to some: “Get out! Get out!” And in front of others, he asks, angry: “What have these people done apart from knowing me?” One of them replies: “He’s right, I wouldn’t be who I became without him, but the question turns around: would he be there without the thousands of imbeciles like me who followed him? “
A few weeks ago, the “unitarian” gang was thinking about a maneuver after the European elections, not before. The announced debacle of the left-wing lists and the potential victory of the far right of Jordan Bardella would have been a strong argument, but the exacerbated divisions on the altar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have put the rebels under pressure. Everything remains baroque. Every decision that could appear as a cannonade against Mélenchon is taken with the greatest precaution. We must not rush anyone, pamper the disgraced rebels like François Ruffin, he who is so hesitant to fight step by step against Jean-Luc Mélenchon. But political time is against them, and the reversal which is taking place with the National Rally, now seen as more respectable than LFI, does not help the affairs of the merry band.
“François Ruffin, with his interview in Le Monde à rebours of what Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his lieutenants say, noted the fact that there was another current at LFI. For months, we have won the right to be cited and the media right of trend within the movement”, reassures one of these rebels on the sidelines. A simple project for a joint forum, condemning the Hamas terrorist attack and bringing together Ruffin, Autain, Faure, Vallaud and other elected officials, from all sides, was abandoned, for fear of reprisals from the Mélenchon clan. And the rebel quoted above warns: “The strategy to create an alternative is a single-shot gun.”