Wednesday, July 3. Marine Tondelier leaves the BFMTV set in a hurry, letting one of her cards fly away. Jordan Bardella enters the frame. The two party leaders pass each other, do not shake hands, do not look at each other. The national secretary of the Ecologists, who until the end had asked to debate with the president of the National Rally – when he refused – had to settle for a simple interview. What does it matter in the end, because the psychodrama of this aborted debate has come to fuel this form of “Tondelier-mania”, which emerged at the beginning of the week. Precisely the day after the second round, when, on the verge of tears on France Inter, Marine Tondelier castigates the “cowardly behavior” of Bruno Le Maire who refuses to include La France Insoumise in the barrage against the extreme right. A viral excerpt, on X (formerly Twitter). Beyond the walls of the Green House, many on the left are hailing her active campaign against the National Rally. And are presenting her as a major figure in these legislative elections.
Roleplay
The native of Pas-de-Calais, raised and settled with her family in Hénin-Beaumont, does she think back today to this conversation fifteen years ago, when she was in her final year of studies at Sciences Po Lille, with her former director? She wants to become a manager in the hospital public service, but the idea of returning to her roots to get involved in politics has been tickling her mind, ever since she joined EELV. “You have a window of opportunity linked to the disinheritance of the socialist left,” Pierre Mathiot advised her at the time. “But being a woman of the left who goes to the box while the National Front is growing rapidly, it’s not going to be easy. You’re going to take some hits.” Still, go for the box. A few years later, in 2014, the National Front’s Steeve Briois won the town hall and made the city the stronghold of Marine Le Pen as well as the showcase of the demonized National Front. Despite successive electoral defeats, the woman who nicknamed herself “the other Marine” in the 2012 legislative elections remains. She is now the head of her political party, the only woman currently in this position. “If we have one criticism to make of Marine Tondelier, it is that she did not go and confront Le Pen in Hénin-Beaumont this time,” whispers a lieutenant of the New Popular Front.
“For part of the population here, she is demonized. It is the direct consequence of the bludgeoning she is subjected to by the municipal majority,” analyses Patrick Piret, opposition councilor. In the final bulletin of the town, the person concerned is the target of a particularly violent column, written by the RN senator and municipal councilor Christopher Szczurek, entitled “In the last elections, Mr. Tondelier received fewer votes than the Animalist Party”. “You only have to go to the market to realize it: the inhabitants of our city can no longer stand the Parisian bobo”, we can read there. In Hénin-Beaumont, the town hall has made Marine Tondelier a scarecrow. “We never want her to leave, she is our life insurance!” dares Bruno Bilde, RN deputy. “It looks like a role-playing game: Marine wins at the national level by being the victim at the local level, and the major wins at the local level by hitting the bourgeoisie,” chides a fellow traveler, more cynically. At what cost? “When we campaign and she gets insulted, Marine doesn’t show it, but she suffers.”
“Not a hyphen but a gravedigger of hope”
While a large part of the left has resigned itself to the idea of obtaining an absolute majority for the New Popular Front, the CV of the author of News from the front, life under the National Front (Editions Les liens qui libèrent, 2017), is all the more timely as it allows us to warn of the dangers of a possible accession of the RN to responsibilities. Enough to atone for what many, on the left and in its camp, still call “original sin”? At the NFP, we remember with great bitterness the panic attacks of the national secretary, on the evening of the dissolution, following her very low score in the European elections (5%) as L’Express reported. “There was however a desire to twist the arm of the Insoumis thanks to an agreement between the Greens, the PCF, the PS and the Ruffinists. But it is still Tondelier, under the friendly pressure of Châtelain [NDLR : la patronne des députés écolos] who came out of the alliance we had been shopping around for, went back to see the Insoumis behind our backs to save their parliamentary group, whispers a socialist strategist. But she is clever, she has erased the image of the one who lay down in front of LFI.” A green opponent with a realist sauce fulminates: “She put Mélenchon back at the center of the game, participated in the LFI-RN bipolarization. That does not make her a hyphen, but a gravedigger of hope.”
With her iconic green jacket and her outspokenness, the former collaborator of Cécile Duflot has nevertheless managed to appear as the smiling face of the New Popular Front. A win-win deal, with all the chapels. “The emergence of Marine Tondelier shows to everyone that our alliance is not just Jean-Luc Mélenchon”, rejoices the number 2 of the Socialist Party, Pierre Jouvet. “As good Marxists, we have reconfigured a division of labor useful to all parties”, ironizes the Insoumis Hadrien Clouet. The ecologists, small arms of the agreement. “She is in the same place as Olivier Faure during the Nupes. It suited everyone and it did no harm to the Insoumis who dominated the agreement”, explains a bigwig of the pink party. Take the light, without casting a shadow.
“Real subjects will still exist”
But beware of escapades in the alliance! In the columns of Releasein the middle of the week, the Green national secretary sets off a small bombshell within the New Popular Front. “France will most certainly experience an unprecedented institutional situation. We will inevitably have to innovate.” And to affirm, later in the interview: “But yes, we must show ourselves ready to govern”, even though Gabriel Attal pleads for “a plural Assembly”, without the Insoumis. Marine Tondelier’s entourage assures us: the Insoumis will not be an adjustment variable in a possible coalition government. “It is totally premature to talk about that now”, regrets a socialist emir.
On June 9, at the Green HQ on Rue des Petits-Hôtels, the activists no longer knew where to look. Marine Tondelier, on the big screen in the room, was commenting on her candidate’s bitter defeat (5.5%) from a TV set. At the same time on the stage, Marie Toussaint, the unfortunate head of the list, was giving her speech at the lectern. “I take my responsibilities, and I hope that everyone in my political family will take theirs.” Everyone, especially the national secretary, who had fought hard to get the Greens to go it alone, declining all the offers of unity on the left. Under the threat of an extraordinary congress, has the head of the sunflower party managed to return to her people in the odor of sanctity? July 13, the date of the next federal council, will sound like a moment of truth. “The real issues will still exist,” whispers an influential local elected official. They will be commented on in light of the final score in the legislative elections.
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