The union is a long calm river. Marine Tondelier, the feathered head of Europe Ecologie-les Verts, knows something about it. She would have liked to stroll around Rome, with a free spirit, far from the discord of Nupes, far from the kid jumps of Jean-Luc Mélenchon whom she now nicknames “Auntie Danielle”. Four days in the eternal city, a moment out of time that she offered herself with her loved ones after a grueling political sequence, between her election as party leader, the Julien Bayou affair to manage, the battle against the reform of the pensions and, of course, the European elections to be prepared. This subject, at the top of the pile on her desk, she intended to deal with when she returned from vacation.
Anyway, she repeated it in all tones, there will be no common Nupes list for this election, the ecologists will go alone. And that Manuel Bompard, the coordinator of La France insoumise, stop insisting, playing “the forcers”, she even says. In the endless queue leading her to the Vatican, under the Easter sun, Marine Tondelier is called back to her way of the cross by Sandrine Rousseau. On the set of BFM, his environmentalist comrade pleads for green sympathizers to be able to join Nupes and for a single list to emerge for Europeans. It will not be said that Marine Tondelier let slip a few blasphemies at the gates of the Vatican.
Tuesday, May 2, 9 p.m., in a dark room not far from the Gare de l’Est in Paris, one of those where weddings are celebrated at little cost. A left-leaning areopagus settles around the few burgundy Formica tables marked by the stab wounds of previous guests. On the socialist side, there is Olivier Faure and his lieutenants Corinne Narassiguin and Pierre Jouvet; Manuel Bompard, Paul Vannier, Manon Aubry and Aurélie Trouvou are there on behalf of the rebellious. Marine Tondelier came with her shadow adviser Augustin Augier, and the Communist Fabien Roussel with Senator Cathy Apourceau-Poly and her friend from the Red Party, Christian Picquet.
“La Nupes will continue without you”
All had agreed to keep the meeting secret but Jean-Luc Mélenchon spoiled the surprise, revealing in a video that this May 2 meeting would be a turning point for Nupes. What annoy the stakeholders. A meeting to “burst abscesses”, according to one of the participants. And there are more than one, from the omnipresence of Mélenchon on Nupes affairs to the European elections, through the senatorial elections and even the presidential election of 2027. For more than three hours, with nothing to wear the tooth, no subject was set aside and the Nupes executives, some of whom were seeing each other for the first time, settled their accounts.
Everyone fired their arrows, but the first aimed Fabien Roussel who angered more than one with his interview at L’Express where he believes that Nupes is “overwhelmed”. He repeated it again that evening: “I want to talk about borders, immigration, sovereignty and the Nupes prevents me from doing so. It’s a straitjacket, a ball and chain.”
– “You are not in a psychiatric hospital either, ironically Marine Tondelier, in front of a Manuel Bompard annoyed by his communist sidekick.
– I want to take stock of the Nupes, hear all the criticism but what you say Fabien is not acceptable, launches the rebellious. No one is forced to be in this room. You can leave.
– If you consider the Nupes outdated, that’s up to you, but you don’t prevent it from evolving, adds Paul Vannier. It will go on without you.”
Fabien Roussel, he does not flinch, and refuses all the leads offered by the rest of the components of Nupes. The agora, this space supposed to bring together unions, associations, left-wing civil society and political parties to compose a common program? It’s no. The coalition contract and the common candidate? No and no. “It’s a coalition, not a marriage contract”, tries to convince him Olivier Faure, who questions him: “What is the other voice that you propose? With Cazeneuve?” And Fabien Roussel to retort, mysterious: “No, I know that it is not built with him but it takes something other than Nupes, or something next to it. In 1981, the left won without a single candidate!”
More than 2027, the disagreement of the moment concerns the strategy for the European elections. The rebellious do not admit defeat and are still trying to change Marine Tondelier’s mind. She, who had never met Manuel Bompard for more than a few seconds in a demonstration in recent weeks, is annoyed by the behavior of the rebellious towards her. A few days earlier, LFI MP Danièle Obono violently attacked her on Twitter, and Manon Aubry gave her a similar lesson on the social network.
– “I’ve already said that I don’t want a single list, so stop putting pressure on me, stop talking to me about European women through the press. Manuel, you never called me to discuss it! dumbest, we can all be very strong.
– You can’t help but want a unique list. I’ll ask you the question again.
– You are a force.
“You maintain that I am a forcer? responds Bompard, who does not accept this word, a reference to sexist and sexual violence, which she has already used during an interview a few months ago.
– Leave her alone ! She has already told you no, intervenes Communist Senator Cathy Apourceau-Poly.
“Do you want to silence Mélenchon?”
But if it is a point of tension above the others, it has a name: that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Not set back enough, too present, too cumbersome… A “lead screed”, even one dares. “I’m tired of commenting on Jean-Luc’s little sentences, like those of Fabien and the others. We have better things to do. We have a lot of people who embody their parish but none of the collective”, stings Olivier Faure, who recalls that “the agora” should not be “the mass of LFI where we listen to the learned words of Dr Mélenchon”. And Bompard to counter-attack: “You want to silence him? So make 22% in the presidential election!”
For three hours, amid jibes and a few fleeting giggles, the Nupes hussars debated this Act II of the Nupes, exposing their differences without ever finding a common path. Whose fault is it ? The rebellious criticize the ecologists and the communists for wanting to stand apart to restore their image, even if it means falling back into the past failings of a left that railed against itself, hated itself. The socialists are the only ones they esteem. Did Jean-Luc Mélenchon not one day confide to Olivier Faure: “there are only two things that will continue to exist, you and us. LFI and the PS are the only two stable pillars”? Nevertheless, even in the socialist ranks, most grievances are aimed at Mélenchon’s troops and the little space they leave to their partners. “We will not live ad vitam aeternam with the project done in thirteen days and thirteen nights in 2022. The rebellious must learn temperance. They cannot always want and decide for others”, argues one of the elephants of the PS present at the meeting.
Annoyances
A green counterpart goes more frontally: “The problem is LFI.” It is also the opinion of the trade unions which refuse again and again to take part in any meeting labeled Nupes so much the confidence with the insubordinates is broken. During the battle against pension reform, a secret meeting between the intersyndicale and the left-wing coalition was canceled at the last second after information leaked to the press. Everyone suspected LFI. A leader of a large trade union center then confided to Marine Tondelier: “Do you now understand why I refuse to come?” Another meeting will be organized later between the unions and the left-wing senators, where the rebels are not.
It is a bitter first anniversary for the left-wing coalition born in April 2022, under the leadership of Mélenchon and LFI. “La Nupes is like a child learning to ride a bicycle. If it stops moving forward, it falls, explains MP Paul Vannier, the LFI election gentleman, to L’Express. If there is no debate, the possibility of convincing its partners with analyzes and discussions, then we risk finding ourselves at a standstill.” It seems that nobody left angry, that things “were said”, that the meeting was “cathartic”. In the middle of the evening, Marine Tondelier discreetly taps an SMS to Olivier Faure, seated at the other end of the table: “It’s like being at the Guignols.” And the socialist boss: “No, the Guignols were funnier.”