The poster is unlikely. A few weeks ago, no one would have believed it. Jean-Luc Mélenchon – the rebellious – and Olivier Faure – the socialist – shared the same stage on Wednesday evening for a joint meeting on the lands of Calvados. “No one would have believed it,” I said because just a few weeks ago, the leader of the France insoumise group, Mathilde Panot, assured in the JDD that there would be no discussions with the PS and that this refusal was “definitive”. At that time, Mélenchon and Faure were feuding brothers. We were coming out of a presidential election where the socialist candidate, Anne Hidalgo, had no harsh enough words for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. However, Olivier Faure assures us in an interview published yesterday by Mediapart: “I have always pleaded for the rally of the left”.
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Since the agreements concluded between LFI, the PCF, EELV, and the PS, Olivier Faure has been doing the job. He defends tooth and nail the NUPES agreement, its program and even its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, when he is attacked. Latest example: the police. After Mélenchon’s controversial tweet, Faure assumed on Mediapart: “In 15 days, you have the Stade de France, the eastern station where passengers are gassed, you have the new bridge where a man died and you have the events of this weekend, with the death of a passenger and a man between life and death. There are people in the police who unfortunately consider themselves to be beyond any constraint and perhaps above the law. There is a problem and I would not like there to be a form of feeling of impunity which leads to what from now on for a simple traffic control we end up six feet under. So there is a subject like there is a subject of racism in the police”he assumed.
Olivier Faure has changed. We tackled his softness. He was suspected of having been tempted by Macronism. I myself readily admit having too quickly classified him as one of the vallsists of the PS. But he took stock of the Holland years. Late, but he did. Settled accounts with Valls. He got angry with a lot of the histories of his political family. He took risks. And he had the courage to bring the PS back to its left by committing sincerely to this unprecedented alliance of the left and ecologists – accepting that the PS is no longer the matrix, the spine, the center of gravity of the left. . Faure traces the future of the socialist party with humility and lucidity. Today, far from hiding behind his little finger, he has become one of the main actors of the NUPES when the communist Fabien Roussel is more reserved, even does not hesitate to hit comrade Mélenchon.
If Faure remains very criticized by his own friends – who accuse him of submitting to Mélenchon, he could however well be the one to whom they will owe their own survivals – activists, parliamentarians and elected officials. He will save his group in the National Assembly. Even he will flesh it out. And it will become difficult for the socialists not to recognize the audacity which will have been his. Faure has been the first secretary of the Socialist Party since April 7, 2018. And he has just taken office. “Mitterrand made the agreement with the PCF in 1972 for the common program when the PS was at 10% and the PCF was at 20%”, he reminded Mediapart. And we will have that Faure was more than ever in his footsteps…
Pierre Jacques