No more peace within the PS and more widely on the left. Since the municipal elections took place, supporters of Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the PS, and his internal detractors have been tearing each other apart. His legitimacy is increasingly challenged, since the agreements made between the two rounds with La France insoumise. This strategy, which allowed some cities to remain under the PS, but not all, has exacerbated latent and longstanding strategic disagreements.
Of course, the 2027 presidential election is in sight, with all the questions it raises: which candidate, which project, and what political perimeter? With everyone considering THE big question: for or against Jean-Luc Mélenchon and LFI in the mix.
For or against a primary?
“Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the dead weight of the left,” insists Olivier Faure, who nevertheless approved the second-round agreements with LFI. That’s where the problem lies. Boris Vallaud, head of the Socialist deputies, and until now rather “Faureist”, is asserting his independence. Since the municipal elections, he has publicly questioned Olivier Faure’s choice of holding a primary for the left decided with Marine Tondelier’s ecologists and the parties of Clémentine Autain and François Ruffin. A primary that half of the PS does not want and that François Hollande’s close associates condescendingly call “the little primary”.
“Boris Vallaud notes that this initiative does not gather support,” decrypts one of his close aides, noting that Raphaël Glucksmann, leader of the party Place Publique, refuses to participate, as does the PC. However, Glucksmann is leading in the polls a year before the presidential election.
Boris Vallaud therefore urges the PS to get into battle readiness and for the Socialist militants to decide before the summer, on the program, the strategy (primary or not) and on the candidate. Faure, on the other hand, is dragging his feet on organizing a vote regarding the candidate. It’s not a rebellion, but the tension is palpable.
Who for the strategic vote?
By chance and irony of the calendar, they were all gathered this Saturday in Montreuil, near Paris, for a debate on social-ecology. A beginning of common work on the substance, displayed. On the same stage: Olivier Faure and Boris Vallaud for the PS, Raphaël Glucksmann and Yannick Jadot, Green senator, internally opposed to his party’s leader, Marine Tondelier.
“We need a left candidate, it’s imperative, otherwise we will all be co-responsible for the arrival of the RN in power,” confides Johanna Rolland, mayor of Nantes and number 2 of the PS. Present in Montreuil, she defends the primary, as a last resort. “I’m not a fetishist of the primary,” says this close to Olivier Faure. “Those who tell us that it doesn’t work should propose something else,” she adds.
A year before the presidential election, the left is experiencing crucial weeks. Faced with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who will be a candidate in any case and who already has a clear project, its different components must agree on a program, and on who will embody the strategic vote against the far right. Something Mélenchon has already managed to do twice.
/https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.basketusa.com%2Fmain%2F2026%2F04%2FUSATSI_12434342_168380191_lowres1.jpg "Preparation, technology and curiosity: Manu Ginobili reveals the secrets of his longevity")
