The stifling heat that falls on the Fête de l’Humanité quickly warms up the crayfish, oysters, whelks and crabs on the seafood platters placed here and there. Fabien Roussel devours a bowl of mussels, without fries, without touching the bottle of Muscadet, which is cold, and talks endlessly. Last week, he says, he met a 65-year-old retiree who cannot pay her electricity bills with her 442 euros a month. He doesn’t remember his name anymore, but it made him angry and that’s why he called for “invading” the prefectures the other day on Franceinfo.
Emmanuel Macron also made him angry, “this president who uses 49.3 like others before him used the guillotine”. A sip of water, a breath. And all this presidential communication annoys him. And suddenly, an idea. “In communicating, there is common but me…” We see him coming with his big clogs. Proud of himself, he will repeat it to the other tables. The mayonnaise has gone bad. He has to run out to meet anyone who comes across him and asks for a selfie, and communist activists too.
Make no mistake, the leader of the PCF is in the presidential campaign. Already. He simply took advantage of the Huma Festival to take a further step, but he no longer hides it from anyone, neither the journalists nor the other bosses of the left. This confidence, on Wednesday August 30, to Olivier Faure, in the street which climbs towards the Education House of the Legion of Honor where Emmanuel Macron invited the party leaders: “You don’t understand, I want to be a candidate in 2027.” No matter Nupes, no matter Jean-Luc Mélenchon, still far ahead on the left in most polls. Roussel believes in his lucky star (red). Even Marine Le Pen doesn’t scare him that much. He says he is the only one who can defeat her. “If it’s Fabien Roussel in the second round, perhaps right-wing voters will vote for me. For a rebel? Never! And they will bear the responsibility.”
“Politics is a matter of sincerity”
“It’s madness. A presidential election is not Miss France… He doesn’t realize his inability to bring people together,” chokes up a communist deputy, unconvinced of the leader’s individualist strategy. Roussel has no use for slanderers as much as he makes fun of Nupes. “Politics is a matter of sincerity. I myself can never be the sole candidate of the left. That doesn’t exist. Green voters won’t find it, and I respect that as I ask that my differences be respected.” And he insists: “Synthesis is impossible.” “It is certain that when we lecture everyone, the synthesis seems difficult”, approves his friend Michaël Delafosse, socialist mayor of Montpellier, who salutes a “coherent” Roussel, “who speaks the language that the left must talk: on social issues, on the Republic, on ecology”.
What is he playing at if not to extricate himself from the Nupes to create a face-to-face with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The step is high, very high, but the communist has finished with the strategy of the good son-in-law that we still saw as minister of openness a few months earlier. Delafosse believes in his chances, more than in those of Mélenchon. “Jean-Luc is a great architect, but he is above all an architect of the glass ceiling rather than of conquest,” says the Montpellier city councilor, who warns: “The first round is essential, but the second is decisive, “even more so when all the dikes facing the extreme right have fallen, with Marine Le Pen polled at 33%! It’s the same score as François Mitterrand in 1988!”
“Out with Belgian chicken! Out with German pork!”
But Roussel remains a communist, and he has decided to wash more red than red. In addition to the prefectures, he calls for “peacefully” invading gas stations and supermarkets as well. From the platform of his meeting, he goes all out against Europe. Some would believe that he is cooking up his own Frexit, at the very least he is flattering the base anti-European instincts. “Out with the English sheep! Out with the Dutch oxen! Out with the Belgian chicken! Out with the German pork! Out!” he chants.
This will be the line of the communist European campaign, the list of which is led by Léon Deffontaines, still unknown to the battalion. The campaign poster has been unveiled, fresh off the press. We see the young boy, with Roussel in the background. “A father and his son,” laughs Ian Brossat, PCF elected official in Paris. There is definitely only one for Fabien Roussel, Lider Maximo of his kind.