As so often on the left, party stories are as complex as they are passionate. Socialists and ecologists would dare not deny it. Those who believed La France insoumise (LFI) preserved from internal clashes and their batches of tears and blood were wrong. The organization of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s movement does not escape the iron law of political movements: crises appear as appetites sharpen.
The bullets fuse in the Mélenchon house. Loudly. The internal reorganization process, launched last summer and which has just been completed, does not please everyone. “Lack of transparency”, “clan functioning”, “locking”, “purge”… Several rebellious personalities denounce this internal reform but also the nebulous designation of Manuel Bompard. The latter ensures a “consensus” without a vote. Clémentine Autain, excluded from this new direction, set fire to the powder by calling to “democratize La France insoumise” on the front page of the daily Release. And Jean-Luc Mélenchon to answer him, visibly annoyed: “All the front page to get us dirty.”
“75 years is not reasonable”
It is not an internal rififi like any other, caused by a few executives disappointed at not having been treated at their fair political value or by a lieutenant who is a little too zealous in protecting Jean-Luc Mélenchon. No, the sequence that has been playing for a few days, far from being trivial, will recur like a spasm. It even has a name: “post-Mélenchon”. At the mention of his words, his relatives always respond as follows: “But he is not dead!” It is said of him that he would be a political Dalida, dreaming of dying on stage. To one of his old traveling companions, he recently said: “75 years old (the age he will be in 2027), it is not reasonable.” And on April 10, 2022, the evening of his third defeat in the presidential election, he proudly launched to his people: “Do better.”
Two words that deceived him as some took it literally, as many heirs have since rained on him: Adrien Quatennens (for a while), Alexis Corbière, Manuel Bompard, Clémentine Autain, François Ruffin… And even Olivier Faure , his new socialist friend. None of these really believe in Jean-Luc Mélenchon retiring and not being a candidate a fourth time, in 2027. They all see a probability, an opportunity, a “just in case”.
Influence struggle
They also know that he won’t dub anyone. In politics, the attributes of the sovereign are not transmitted to dolphins, they are taken, conquered. The heir or heiress will have to impose himself and recover the crown himself, from the hands of Mélenchon if he dares, on the ground if the latter is no longer there. Only one thing is certain: there will necessarily be one, an heir. “There will be a soul as charitable as disinterested to pick up the flag”, said François Mitterrand when Jean-Luc Mélenchon was the age of his successors.
What other point in common between a Clémentine Autain and a François Ruffin than their presidential ambition to justify their salvoes yesterday against a potential competitor – Manuel Bompard – at the helm of the rebellious machine? A struggle for influence has opened up, in form and substance. The Ruffin line is not that of Autain, which is not that of Bompard. The first dreams of reconquering the working classes of peripheral France, the second claims to belong to an ecological social left, the spearhead of the feminist fight and anti-racism; and the third intends to strengthen the LFI vote in urban centers and their inner suburbs, hoping that the rest of the working classes will eventually join them.
The haunting of Mélenchon
One deputy from the Somme, the other from Seine-Saint-Denis, the third from Bouches-du-Rhône… Three Frances, three leftists, three currents of La France insoumise. No offense to Jean-Luc Mélenchon who abhors these patterns, the fruit of divisions. He has seen too much in the Socialist Party. These same currents which prevented it from congress in congress, which pushed it to leave the PS. “There will be no vote in La France insoumise. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever,” he told journalist Hadrien Mathoux (Mélenchon: the fall, Editions du Rocher, 2017). In a note on his blog published Monday, December 12, he wants to cut short the bickering of the moment and recalls that LFI will never be the PS. His organization? “Nothing to see with […] a salon of sour encounters between currents and undercurrents. The assessment of the miasmas of the time of the parties of the 20th century has been drawn for a long time. ” His great fear resurfaces. Therein lies the paradox: this is how his heirs will exist and will try to survive him.
In an old article by Release, so old that it dates back to January 19, 1996, eleven days after the death of François Mitterrand, the journalist Alain Duhamel peeled the heritage of the socialist Sphynx. “The trouble with Republican monarchs is that their succession automatically leads to division, often even to the crumbling of their political heritage,” he wrote. Heritage is explosive material. Jean-Luc Mélenchon knows this well. Who could believe him, when he said “do better”? No one had done better than Mitterrand. Neither Jospin, nor Chevènement, nor the others. Who will try to dare to do better than Mélenchon?