Contempt. At least, a slightly overplayed condescension. Raphaël Glucksmann has long caused a simple eyebrow raise in Macronie. At best a “whistleblower” on the Uighurs. At worst, an “influencer”, more capable of accumulating likes on Instagram than victories in the European Parliament. And then, this well-born Parisian, son of a philosopher, is so far removed from popular concerns. Did he not admit to feeling “culturally” more at home in New York than in Picardy? No, we don’t play the same sport. At least not in the same division. “It’s stupid to talk about him. It devalues us,” a minister recently confided.
Indifference has lived. The Socialist Party candidate makes a breakthrough in the polls, two months before the European elections. With 13% voting intentions, the founder of the Place publique movement is only four points ahead of Renaissance leader Valérie Hayer, in a survey conducted by Harris-Interactive for Challenges. He has grown wings. “They had planned for it to be a duel with the far right, we are showing that there is a third way,” he raged on Wednesday April 3 at a meeting in Rouen.
Composite electorate
Each election has its own surprise. His media story of an inexorable rise, sometimes contradicted at the polls. Raphaël Glucksmann ticks the boxes. When she goes on a television set, Valérie Hayer is guaranteed to be asked about her rival. This RN-Renaissance duel was definitely long awaited. Finally some chili! Renaissance would like to make this competitor invisible, but the microphones are so many injunctions to comment on its campaign.
This is where the matter gets complicated. The presidential camp is struggling to mount an effective response to this herald of the social-democratic left, to the composite electorate. Out of 100 supporters of Raphaël Glucksmann, 38 voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon and 30 lined up behind Emmanuel Macron during the presidential election, according to a study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. The former deplore the positions of La France insoumise on international issues while the latter regret the right-wing change of the head of state. The MEP is at the ideological crossroads of these two camps, combining a social discourse and an attachment to European construction. “He embodies a double alternative,” notes a Renaissance pillar.
“We have to nupesize him”
The response to the candidate is all the more delicate. Two schools coexist at Renaissance. Valérie Hayer highlighted at the start of the campaign her “90%” of common votes in the European Parliament with the essayist to stifle him. She opposes her opponent with stronger influence in Brussels, with her status as head of the Renew delegation. “We must remind our electorate tempted by him that the useful vote is that of the presidential majority,” she judges privately.
This kiss of death strategy bristles some elected officials, anxious to send Raphaël Glucksmann back into the fold of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “We have to Nupesize it,” says a former minister. “Highlight our divergent votes on nuclear power or the Asylum Immigration Pact,” adds a Macronist strategist. Sometimes the two arguments intertwine. Like last March 8, where Valérie Hayer spoke on France Inter about the common votes in Brussels… then crushed an elected official “subservient to the PS under the control of Mélenchon”. Ally in Brussels, adversary in Paris. Beware of headaches. A Renaissance executive sums it up: “We don’t really have a choice. I don’t even know what argument to use.”
Conflicting reviews
Other political forces contribute to this foggy image. In 2022, Raphaël Glucksmann paid lip service to the creation of Nupes, due to “divergences” with LFI on “more than fundamental subjects”. The radical left group has not forgotten this. Its executives establish the MEP as an apostle of a soft left, purged of all radicalism. On He is portrayed as a warmonger on the Ukrainian issue, in the wake of the President of the Republic. Each of his outputs is dissected. “You are really the France of people happy with Macron in a caricatured way,” launches LFI MP Antoine Léaument on Twitter in response to a statement by the MEP on taxation. This excommunication makes the lawsuit in collusion with Nupes brought by the government less credible.
If you are a Macronist, you are therefore on the right. Oh no ! From the left, retorts François-Xavier Bellamy. The head of the LR list is trying to reintroduce a left-right divide into the campaign to find political oxygen. He read with relish Valérie Hayer’s declarations on her closeness to the founder of Place publique. The roles are distributed. The right ? It’s Bellamy. Left ? The Hayer-Glucksmann duo, placed in the same ideological family.
Everyone has their own Glucksmann. The candidate is moved from the hard left to the center of the chessboard, according to the interests of his competitors. Critics contradict each other, at the risk of neutralizing each other. They transform the candidate into a smooth projection surface, capable of aggregating divergent electorates. “A new ‘at the same time’ of the left” asks the study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. This was quite successful for the inventor of the concept.
.