In La France insoumise, it is rumored that “Jean-Luc is bored”. It is one of his young followers, a deputy, who reports the concern shared by some. Mélenchon scribbles on X (ex-Twitter) and on his blog, and there was his book (Do better!, Robert Laffont, 2023) which he imagines as a theoretical reference, but politics is more than that. Far from the castagne in the National Assembly, he would like to show that he is still there, the third man in the last two presidential elections. Far from heaven, far from heart.
When we no longer do much in politics, the funniest rumors appear. Here, the last one: Jean-Luc Mélenchon is champing at the bit so much that he is considering being a candidate in the 2024 European elections. It even landed on the desk of Renaissance MEP Stéphane Séjourné, whose entourage believed in it as hard as he could. iron. It was forgotten how much the Insoumis abhorred his return trips to Brussels or Strasbourg at the end of his European mandate, at least as much as he railed against his trips between Paris and Marseille when he was a deputy for the Marseille city. The funny rumor makes her loved ones laugh, who let her run to their delight.
However, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is bored and he doesn’t really know which way to go next. 2023 was not as easy as he expected. Oh, he suspected that Olivier Faure’s socialists would sooner or later take the lead from Nupes and that the environmentalists, already unreliable and messy during the negotiations in 2022, would also veer away. What he didn’t see coming was the rebellion of his own people, which lasts, and all his new deputies who do not stand to attention when the strategy he dictates evolves. Gone are the days when he had only 17 deputies under his command, “his wildlings” as he called them. This is what happened at the time of the Adrien Quatennens affair, then when the management was purged of the grunts that are Alexis Corbière, François Ruffin, Clémentine Autain, Raquel Garrido and Eric Coquerel, replaced by the flock as fresh as they are disciplined. “His young red guard,” taunts a rebellious rebel.
No man’s land
His hesitant, thoughtful waltzes to qualify Hamas’ action against Israel on October 7 as “terrorist” have further widened the gap between the rebels on one side, supported by around fifteen parliamentarians, and the lieutenants, at least so numerous. In the middle, a soft stomach about which Jean-Luc Mélenchon knows nothing and fears that he will lose his cuti. Recently, it was the sanction against Raquel Garrido which caused tensions within the parliamentary group. Many had little taste for the symbolism of the duration of the punishment: four months, like Quatennens. He had slapped his wife; she criticized the rebellious leader. The Telegram loop of LFI deputies has become a no man’s land where bullets fly at the first person who is a little too critical.
What if, all things considered, Nupes had not been Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s mistake too many? Back in 2022, at the start of negotiations. The leader is still hesitant, the socialist emissaries know it and are trying to convince their rebellious counterparts of the importance of being so. “Either he is the great architect of the left, or he finishes us off with a shovel,” summarized Maxime des Gayets, a PS executive and close to Olivier Faure, at the time, in front of Paul Vannier, the LFI elections man. Only Jean-Luc Mélenchon fails to see that entering into a coalition with the rest of the left-wing parties will change the very nature of his own movement. The Nupes is a corruption for LFI since it engages the movement, yesterday claimed to be left-wing populist, in a process of political gentrification. Mélenchon then accepts the measure of the conquest of power, even running for the post of Prime Minister.
The Quatennens affair, the purges, the honorability in the National Assembly… All the crises experienced by LFI since then are linked to the demands of the culture of a supposedly exemplary and democratic government party. In 1991, the senator from Massy that he was published one of his reference books, yet forgotten by his young guns today. An attempt to “resume theoretical reflection” then abandoned by a PS distorted by the “turn of rigor” where he castigates: “In reality, the culture of government presents itself as a vulgar, small-time State Leninism.” (To conquer chaos, Denoël, 1991). By making Nupes, Mélenchon betrayed Mélenchon.
“Those who think we can win without Mélenchon are wasting our time”
In the same work, he explains how the left “feeds on the faults of order”, that “reconstructive chaos is its specific territory.” You have to count on changing events. You have to ride the wave rather than try to tame it. 2024 has already begun, he wants to believe, on October 7, when it once again became the central object of criticism coming from all sides, from the far right of Marine Le Pen to the left-wing parties which engaged yesterday with him. He is finally alone again, a scarecrow in everyone’s eyes, relieved of this Nupes who obliged him. The immigration law which has just been passed by Macronie, LR and the RN is just one more event which weakens the central bloc, crystallizing that of the right on one side, and that of the left on the other. “This is confirmation of what we have been saying for several months: if Macronism wants to exist without 49.3, it needs new allies. It has decided to seek them out on the right and the extreme right,” analyzes LFI deputy Matthias Tavel. Nothing has changed in the eyes of the Rebels, Mélenchon remains the best card to play, yesterday, as today, tomorrow, if by chance Emmanuel Macron chose dissolution, and even the day after tomorrow, in 2027. “Those who think that we can win the presidential election without Jean-Luc Mélenchon are wasting our time,” judges the same Tavel.
The events, always them… Those to come, however, do not bode well for the leader of La France insoumise. 2024, the year of all dangers. He knows it. A rebel who knows his Mélenchon well sees clearly that the leader “is afraid” of what is coming, “from prison to Europeans.” This will have nothing to do with those of 2019. At the time, Yannick Jadot made 13% and we gossiped about this historic score which would be a springboard for the next presidential election. A tall tale, in which Mélenchon never believed. If it is a socialist and the PS who regain momentum, the matter is no longer the same. Socialist Easter? “Glucksmannmania” in the Europeans? The rebellious young guard prefers to laugh at all this, and doesn’t believe it for a second.
Alone on stage
Mélenchon is more concerned. He himself confided it during the Nupes negotiations, when he was at the peak of his form and the PS at the gate of the cemetery with the 1.7% of his candidate: “I know the house. I was a feudal lord socialist, never forget that… You can’t be smart.” The resignation of Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau, and the threats of evasion by other ministers against a backdrop of disagreement with the Immigration law, further fracture Emmanuel Macron’s central bloc. And the same Insoumis to drop the ax: “The question of unity remains cardinal and its borders are not yet known. How far can we go? Jean-Luc cannot be the candidate of this unity, it “It’s even the opposite since if the left-wing Macronists break out, he can’t capture them. He’s a foil.”
Ironically, he is alone on stage. The ball is in his hand but he doesn’t know what to do with it. A scene in the Senate, November 21: the socialist mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan is visiting the capital for the Mayors’ Fair. One-on-one with Patrick Kanner, the boss of the PS and anti-Nupes senators to the tips of his nails. Very quickly, the debate on the 2027 presidential election. “A second round between Le Pen and Mélenchon? But I’m not going to vote! He will be 35 and she will be 65!” thunders Kanner, desperate by the situation on the left. Payan replies: “But of course yes, you will go and vote. Otherwise, how will you look in the mirror the next day?” This is perhaps Mélenchon’s last chance. He knows that a bourgeois bloc will not completely turn its back on him, despite his words, despite October 7. We still have to convince them… Mélenchon, condemned by Nupes.
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