It might not seem like it at first glance, but Philippe Brun is young and a socialist. He has the chubby face of his candid thirties devoured by large binoculars, a small musketeer-like goatee, neat hair. The costume is well cut, nothing opulent. He did Sciences Po and the ENA, a tour in the petticoats of Ségolène Royal, a few internships at the National Assembly with Axelle Lemaire, whom he refused to follow at the State Secretariat for Digital in the first Valls government. In short, a deputy like the Socialist Party has made, remade and defeated… And yet Philippe Brun does not resemble any other of his peers from the Nupes, and a fortiori from the PS.
Is it because in private, Marine Le Pen says the greatest good of this elected representative from Eure, the only socialist elected from a department besieged by the National Rally? In June 2022, it took little for his constituency, that of the late Pierre Mendès France, to fall into the hands of the far-right party. “I saw the death of the left closely. Jean-Luc Mélenchon only made 17% in the first round when Marine Le Pen came out on top with 38%. My constituency was no longer on the left”, regrets- he. Here, in a rural area, one of the driest medical deserts in the country where yellow vests have swarmed much more than elsewhere, minds have been “RNized” for several years.
Roundabouts, fries and sausages
Settling in this Norman department was not the career plan of this son of a French teacher – “vaguely on the right”, he smiles – and of an EDF agent father – “who had to vote Fillon in 2017”. Once enarque, he saw himself well at Bercy, at the Treasury, perhaps at the general management of companies. The occupation of roundabouts by yellow vests in 2018 will shake up his plans. “I came back to my parents while waiting for my classification at the ENA and I saw my college friends on the roundabouts, with a yellow vest on their backs. While talking with them I saw a people in the state gross that came out of its individualism, its militant abstentionism, its apathy sometimes and which came to be politicized. It spoke of taxes, RIC, etc. I heard new ideas that could renew our software as May 68 has done with the left of the 70s”, says Philippe Brun, convinced “that the hopes of November 2017 will regenerate the left of the 2020s”.
Farewell to the Treasury, then. The young enarque takes his gear, returns to his father and mother in Louviers. He goes to the administrative court, settles in an apartment and prepares for the municipal elections, helped by a few local yellow vests including Ingrid Levavasseur, one of the figures of the movement. Nothing helps, the RN settles, always stronger. He lost the municipal election then the departmental ones. “He was one of the very few to fight, when he was not even thirty,” recalls Michaël Delafosse, the mayor of Montpellier, 700 kilometers away, the only one to call him in the evenings of defeats to convince him to continue and go to the legislative elections. “The land, that’s all I have”, sums up Brun, organizer of the “everything fairs”, these famous popular festivals in Norman villages. A way for him to reconnect the political class and France from below. On September 2 there is a new one, with “rides, concerts, fries, sausages”, but also the rebellious Alexis Corbière, the anti-Nupes socialist Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, the ecologist Karima Delli.
Obsession
Philippe Brun develops his line, a little too quickly, a little too strong, a little too much against the PS for the taste of certain socialists. One more auto-entrepreneur in the pink house. A highly organized deputy, whom his colleagues look on with astonishment when he arrives at the Palais Bourbon with his army of collaborators, trainees for many, as if he had his own cabinet, as if he had an entourage, a clan. A small court around a small craftsman of politics. Last June, he was criticized for his media chin blows on immigration, in particular in an interview with L’Express where he criticized the left for not having been “at the rendezvous” with this subject. It doesn’t matter that he is not a member of the PS working group on the issue or in the committee about it, Philippe Brun needs to be seen and heard on this theme, carrier, and held with an iron fist by the RN.
In many ways, he is reminiscent of Arnaud Montebourg, of whom he was campaign manager in 2022. The two men have remained friends, dine together regularly, again this summer at the former minister’s home. On the menu, a lot of encouragement but Brun will no longer follow him in the campaign, as he keeps a sad memory of the last aborted and chaotic presidential adventure. “He is more to the right than me on security and immigration. I don’t always listen to his advice,” concedes Brun. In turn to carry the heritage of “montebourisme”, this sovereigntist current of the left, carried by the man in the striped shirt, which wants to be closer to the popular strata of society than the social democracy of François Hollande and the insubordination of a Jean-Luc Mélenchon. His friends Arthur Delaporte and Boris Vallaud, the leader of the PS deputies, greet a “precious” comrade, “in a hand-to-hand fight against the RN”. “The fight against the far right is obsessed with him,” explains the first, ambiguously.
Fort Alamo
At the beginning of the summer, the tone rose between the two PS youngsters. In an article from World on the establishment of the RN in the Eure, Philippe Brun admits that the presence of the party of Marine Le Pen has become “trivialized”. “There is no longer, except in the population of immigrant origin, detestation of the RN.” In front of the article, the father of Arthur Delaporte, a longtime socialist, chokes, and sends the quote to his deputy son, who also spits out his breakfast. A long, stormy explanation will follow, on the WhatsApp loop of the Socialist parliamentarians, then face-to-face. “What he said is simply wrong! It’s not just immigrants who hate the RN, there are also plenty of workers, Delaporte justifies himself today. These are the effects of sleeves a little simplistic ideas that reinforce the stereotypes of opinion on the left.” And to get annoyed: “Me, I will never say that the establishment of the RN is successful because I refuse to give the point to the opponent. I am in favor of the dike against the far right, and he so I don’t doubt it but you have to know: either we are Fort Alamo, or we are something else…”
By being too “obsessed” with the RN, is the dike cracking at Philippe Brun? “It is the legacy of Montebourg and Chevènement to walk on the ridge line with the RN, and it can happen to him to set foot on the wrong side”, concedes a PS executive. Among the frontists, we joke about a proximity, at least in the text, with the socialist deputy. “Anyway, Philippe Brun will eventually join us”, laughs Renaud Labaye, the secretary general of the RN group in the National Assembly, who salutes an “honest socialist, guided by the defense of the national interest”.
The duty of a generation
One particular episode gave socialists cold sweats. In February 2022, in the Hemicycle, Philippe Brun carried a bill aimed at the nationalization of the EDF group and the text seduced on all the benches of the opposition, from the PCF to the RN via the LR. The government is firmly opposed to the idea of renationalizing the electrician, but the ranks of the majority are more sparse than usual and Brun’s text has every chance of passing, still it is necessary that the deputies of the opposition are mobilizing, and in particular those of the RN. This is Philippe Brun’s great concern. In the corridors of the Palais Bourbon, it is said that he would have called the RN to ask them to mobilize their deputies and pass the text.
The rumor swells, and Philippe Brun denies, eyes in the eyes of Boris Vallaud, leader of the PS deputies, to have gone to seek the votes of the RN himself. “It was not he who called me, but one of his collaborators, the day before the vote, called me to find out if we would be present at the vote. I reassured him”, says RN Renaud Labaye. An exchange confirmed by Philippe Brun, who rather evokes “a trainee who found herself sitting alongside an RN, asked her if there would be many of them and she reported it to me, that’s all.” He adds: “I did not call anyone, I would assume it otherwise. The RN has fun telling this to compromise me, because I resist them in the Eure, because they cannot fight me .”
A storm in a teacup, which says a lot about the procrastination of the left in its relationship to the RN. How far will the dike hold between her and the extreme right? Philippe Brun prefers to forget this episode, and rather claims to be the ardent defenders of Nupes within the PS. He is one of the rare socialists to defend the idea of a common list for the European election, even if he points to the same problems as the critics of Nupes. “We need union with the Insoumis, but we have to rebalance the balance of power otherwise we are going into the wall. We had a bad year because the diploma of the best opponent, it was the RN who obtained it then that the country has never been so much on the left. I’m fed up with the losing machine, but I will remain united”, assures Philippe Brun, who raised his hat to Jean-Luc Mélenchon the day after the legislative elections. “Without him, the French left would be at the level of the Italian left,” he told the Point. The Insoumis in chief then split an SMS of thanks, adding: “It is the duty of your generation to rebuild a PS which will be ready to govern in ten years.”