Will the left bury the ecologists between now and June 9? Marie Toussaint repeats, however, that there will be “no ecology without Ecologists”. But at least allow the Insoumise Manon Aubry to recall that in terms of ecology, there is “an effective vote”: hers. And if voters were to despair of the latest polls, some defectors from the Green House – like the former EELV MEP Damien Carême, or the former boss of the Young Ecologists, Camille Hachez – also appear on the ballot. Mélenchonist list… EELV has little taste for the words of Insoumise in Sunday in politics last weekend, already inaugurated at a meeting in Paris, by the one they nickname “the presentable face of Mélenchonian brutality”. Sober reaction from Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of EELV to L’Express: “I’ll leave it to her words. But coming from someone who has always advocated unity, unity, nothing but unity… “
Out of the question for Raphaël Glucksmann to indulge in these dirty tasks. “It shouldn’t be the methods of left-wing parties; it’s like the LFI campaign,” says one of its strategists. “We have enough resources to avoid wishing the Greens to have no elected officials.” But the campaign is in full swing, and the optics of a sorpasso to Valérie Hayer’s Macronist list is well worth a few glances at the environmentalist people… And other banderillas to the sunflower party. As during this interview on the site Reporterre in mid-May, when the former essayist calls for “taking political ecology out of its ghetto”. Without failing to recall that 86% of their votes in Strasbourg were similar. Because the team of the PS-Place Publique candidate is rubbing its hands when noting the high volatility of the intentions of the green electorate, according to published studies. “Normally, the closer we get to our base of diehards, the more the security of choice increases. Except for them.” Do we ever know.
“Our moderate posture goes unnoticed”
To say that Marie Toussaint had proposed to the rest of the left a “non-aggression pact”… Because the head of the list The Ecologists abhors the low blows and the little phrases which contribute to the divisions on the left. Last summer, La Bordelaise, in favor of a Nupes list, had to comply with the members’ vote in favor of an independent candidacy. From this frustration, she retained an obsession: “The challenge for the future will be to know how to bring us together again,” she assured last November. But six months have passed since then, and the green candidacy is close to the fateful 5% mark in the polls, synonymous with the disappearance of the French green delegation in Strasbourg. The hunt for left-wing voters then logically resumed its rights. “She hits on Glucksmann and at the same time not too much. On the Insoumis, and at the same time not too much. Nobody is satisfied, and at the same time everyone is, summarizes a running mate. The difficulty is that our moderate posture goes unnoticed, because it doesn’t really correspond to the current political debate.” The price to pay, so as not to insult the future.
Some people nightmare about the future as a long crossing of the desert. “We could have a good surprise, like experiencing a real catastrophe”, worries a party executive, while a close friend of the candidate “hopes that people will understand that there is no useful vote in the European elections”, to avoid disappearing from the hemicycle. The hope of repeating Yannick Jadot’s score (13.47%), snatched in the money time of 2019, seems to be over. To the bad polls, the Green House now opposes the existence of an “ecological backlash”, accelerated by the farmers’ crisis and explaining the weakening of their sister parties on the rest of the continent. “Our ideas have certainly infused into society, but we have more difficulty than ever existing, analyzes Noël Mamère, historical figure and former presidential candidate. The fault lies with this coalition of denial which is stiffening, wants to maintain the status quo , and considers us, ecologists, as enemies.” A “headwind” campaign, we repeat over and over among ecologists, compared to the previous one, marked by the advent of the “climate generation”. Others, still marked by the Booty Therapy spectacle, point above all to “an NGO campaign”, “off to a bad start” and a bit “defeatist”.
“Major maneuvers”
In the face of worry, knives sharpen. On May 23, the two opposition motions “Ecologist Spring” (the realist wing of the party) and “What binds us” (regionalist current) launched hostilities against Marine Tondelier, calling for an extraordinary congress to be convened well before the date set by management, in the fall of 2025. With the aim of marking the end of the reign of the current executive, and taking control of the designations for future deadlines. In email exchanges from the Federal Council loop, revealed by Opinion and also consulted by L’Express, the national secretary is indignant at the “quite inappropriate” messages. “Very sincerely, I did not expect that the major maneuvers on the date of the organization of the next congress would begin on May 23, while we are in the home stretch of a crucial European campaign. I envy you to have a head for that.”
Thus are born the picrocholine revolts among the Greens, capable of scuttling themselves a few weeks before an existential vote. Series Parliament (France Télévisions, 2020 – in progress), fiction dedicated to the functioning of the European hemicycle, is, on this subject, very instructive. In the final season, while the outgoing president in Strasbourg worries about his green competitor’s chances of beating him, his political advisor reassures him: “I used the oldest method to sabotage the environmentalists.” “That is to say?”, wonders the president. “Let them do it.”