Why is he smiling so much? Yet for twenty minutes Raphaël Glucksmann has been ruining the atmosphere. “There will be war in Europe by 2029,” he said wide-eyed, paraphrasing the words of the German Defense Minister. He repeats this observation to anyone who will listen in this café on Place Saint-Georges, a stone’s throw from his home. To the young waiter who brings him his honey tea, for example. Donald Trump and the threats of annexation of Greenland, Elon Musk and his mission to destabilize European democracies… Did he even convince? “That’s none of our business,” his interlocutor timidly brushes off. “Oh yes, it will quickly stare at us!”, he quips. Failed this time. On January 20, he will follow suit and leave the X platform for good. “Nero is in power in the US,” he continues. “Nero”, he assures – half proud, half serious – he met him on March 10, 2011, when he was special advisor to the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. At the time, Donald Trump confided his future ambitions to him. “With what program?” Glucksmann asked. “Very simple: because I am the best.“At the time, he despised it. Basically, the anecdote made him laugh a little. “Because he’s a Camusian who opposes joy to the absurdity of the world!”, exclaims Saïd Benmouffok , the Place publique de Paris coordinator We must therefore imagine Sisyphus happy…
“Every time it gets complicated, it disappears”
Raphaël Glucksmann has a problem: ambition tickles him… But he loathes the way politics is practiced today. In particular this injunction made to personalities of all stripes to “comment on everything, all the time, every day”, converted in the long run into “free employees in continuous news channels”, even into “Pierre Clastres shamans”, these indigenous figures, analyzed at the end of the 20th century by the sociologist, inaudible to ordinary mortals. Notice to the bad tongues – including L’Express – who thought he had disappeared a little (at least in retreat) during these last Matignonesque negotiations: “If there is no added value to my words, I will not speak” , asserts the one who assures “refuse all invitations”. A left-wing party leader, crueler: “Every time it’s complicated, it disappears.”
Does the reproach stick to him? He had already done it after the last legislative elections. After the dissolution swept away his honorable score in the European elections (the coffee table takes a big hit when he remembers the scene), and after having painfully supported the New Popular Front – breaking with Olivier Faure, boss of the PS – he had disappeared from the public scene, gone to spend a few days in Corsica, then fully enjoyed the Olympic Games at Club France. Until his reappearance, at the end of August, distributing a few cleats on the port side in an interview with Point – the initiative had caused talk on the left. Privately when he rewrites history, he considers himself caught in the contradiction of his own doctrine. “This summer, I tried not to tweet for two months. People were like ‘you didn’t react to that, don’t you care?’ I then understood the vicious circle.”
Never mind. At Christmas, after deploring that Emmanuel Macron had ignored the left and pleaded for a non-censorship agreement, he left to recharge his batteries for a week in the south of France. The AS Roma fan played a lot of football with his children, cut X and read a few books, including The Chaos Engineersthe stirring bestseller by Giuliano da Empoli, which sat on his pile of books. No doubt the reading only reinforced his observation: “I have the impression that the French political class is not at all at the alert level,” he regrets. My more- value is to explain that the domestic political crisis is all the more serious as a geopolitical storm is looming.”
“I will be a leader of the Democratic camp in the face of the storms to come”
With what means? “Glucksmann is not in the parliamentary game, but all the country’s politics happens in the Assembly,” whispers a socialist cacique. He is far from the ball, in the stands, stuck in a dilemma: to keep silent, or to speak with a low value.” Forced overhang? No one is required to do the impossible, especially when we only have one national parliamentarian, Aurélien Rousseau. But ministers are sometimes great. The Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard, for example, who knows Rousseau well since the latter almost joined him at the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, sometimes lets it be known that he appreciates Glucksmann, whom he knew shortly before taking up his position. ministerial functions. He will invite them to Bercy on Monday, as part of consultations linked to the budget – a first for the party. Place publique will defend health spending, oppose job cuts in education, and call for a “thorough review” of pension reform, both in terms of its financing and the retirement age. Just that.
“Hello Yannick?” At the end of November, Raphaël Glucksmann’s number appeared on Jadot’s smartphone. The first invited the ecologist to his political return to La Réole, both benefited from the same electorate in the European elections, and the same success. So the former essayist thinks, fumbles… Let’s dream big: Public place to rule Paris thanks to the senator’s candidacy? The person concerned poutes, still not decided to go first in the race to City Hall. The idea, on the other hand, seems to please Anne Hidalgo. On the Place publique side, some deny it, others assure that the option has not been ruled out.
Small voice, big aspirations. Benmouffok has just collected the keys to the new Place publique HQ, a 100 square meter space at the back of a building on Rue Richer, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. No more cramming sessions via video or in cafes, while nearly “200 people”, says Glucksmann, senior civil servants and other agency heads, work voluntarily (the party has no employees) on a training program. “15 axes and 47 sub-axes”, which he promises to deliver in June this year. Sometimes, he “crash-tests” some of his measures with big bosses, because “the social democracy that he wants to reinvent is not the praise of moderation”. For what? So as not to be taken by surprise in the event of another dissolution, of course. “I will be a democratic watchdog, a leader of the democratic camp in the face of the coming storms”, quite simply. And for 2027? “Anyone who orients their life according to this deadline has not very well understood the moment we are living through.” His entourage reflects the hesitations: “Either there is a wide space, the PS frees itself from Mélenchon, and we try something because only Raphaël can do it. Either it is vitiated from within, Mélenchon puts such pressure that the socialists are lining up behind him and it’s becoming complicated for us.”
“On May 1, something happened in his head”
Raphaël Glucksmann, for the moment, is working and structuring his version, this is the message that must be conveyed. The number of members of his movement, founded at the end of 2018, jumped from 1,500 to nearly 11,000. “The party is facing a growth crisis,” breathes a friend of the essayist, while a Congress must take place soon to adapt the structure to this new dimension. Boss of a “mass movement” – apart from a few activists – quite a job! Quietly, some of his party’s supporters consider it “too ununitary” in relation to the initial promise. “The party has changed since these European elections, while I was committed from the start to an idea of uniting the left,” says Anaïta David, a young representative who slammed the door. “hope in this congress”.
Privately, Olivier Faure also believes that he is doing a little too much with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “On May 1, something happened in his head and he never fully recovered,” he confides to his family, referring to the day Glucksmann was ousted from a demonstration by activists. communists whom he had taken for rebels. Recently, the essayist saw his right-hand man, Pierre Natnaël Bussière, his spin doctor for the Europeans and faithful from the start, take the field for personal reasons. But also because the NFP negotiations have, for him, “hurt an ideal”. From the latter, he regularly reuses the formula to illustrate his political positioning: “Neither Jupiter, nor Robespierre”.
Hello Léa Salamé, this is Gilles Legendre. During the summer, the former boss of the Macronists in the Assembly, Raphaël Glucksmann’s vacation neighbor, invited the couple and Emmanuel Macron’s former advisor Philippe Grangeon, accompanied by his wife, to break bread in Saint- Florent. The former Renaissance MP came away “admiring” from this meeting. Thus Glucksmann, who claims his dialogue with the center, cultivates his networks in fallen Macronie, and exchanges regularly with Clément Beaune. That same summer, Olivier Faure, in one of their last conversations, warned him: “Raphaël, you cannot be the candidate of the right wing of the left.” The opponents of the first secretary of the PS continue to stage their complicity with Glucksmann. Without forgetting to observe it. On November 18, François Hollande discreetly received him at his office, rue de Rivoli: together, they discussed the future of social democracy, and how to “organize this fraction of the political landscape” – some hope to bring about a rapprochement between Place publique and the Socialist Party. The person concerned didn’t seem very good. A few months later, Raphaël Glucksmann welcomed the “moves” of the socialist leadership, which affirmed its distance from Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “We are now on the same political line,” he rejoices about the PS. Olivier Faure and his former head of the list have logically reconnected. So, with roses, “everything is on the table, provided there is a clear political line”, he insists.
On the evening of the censorship of Michel Barnier, certain ex-Macronists suggested his name to replace the future ex-Prime Minister. It doesn’t take much for others to call it instrumental. Raphaël Glucksmann is still looking for himself.
.