CHRONIC. Ubuesque is the idea that the PS passes its turn for the 2027 election and supports an external candidacy? Some, however, are seriously thinking about it. Is this so absurd?
When François Hollande’s former Minister of Justice, Jean-Jacques Urvoas, expressed the idea that his party should take action during the presidential election, some might have thought it was a schoolboy joke. Or a political calculation of eight-cushion billiards.
Claiming that the Fifth Republic has lost its presidential character and that it increasingly resembles a parliamentary regime, the current professor of public law at the University of Western Brittany urges his little comrades in the Rose Party to concentrate on the future legislative elections, to weigh in on the National Assembly.
Basically, why waste your time in a losing battle? It is therefore necessary to “ zap » the Élysée affair so as not to experience a new electoral catastrophe which could well lead to the pure and simple disappearance of the PS. Play dead, like in poker. To his credit, the last two results of the PS in the race for the Élysée do not prove him wrong. 2017: Benoît Hamon slowly reached 6.4% of the vote. Five years later, Anne Hidalgo plunged into the depths with the disastrous score of 1.7%. A historic collapse from which the party, in fact, never recovered.
He invited him for the last few minutes
Today, he is still navigating low water in the polls, only surviving thanks to his electoral alliance, in 2024, with LFI. A trap from which he never managed to escape, contrary to the declarations of Olivier Faure and his friends. The party’s weakness condemns it, in fact, to remaining a satellite of the Mélenchonist movement. This half-hostage posture exploded the leadership, more than weakened by the revolt of Boris Vallaud, boss of the socialist deputies.
This weakness is therefore indeed a serious handicap for reversing this decline curve and dreaming of a revival, one year before the presidential deadline. However, the observation is implacable: no current leader seems able to influence the course of History, with the exception of the former president, François Hollande, who is showing his nose in the polls, approaching 8% of voting intentions. Nothing to get excited about as his position within the PS today is that of the last minute guest, who is accepted at the end of the table, barely tolerated by those who had fought against him in the ranks of the rebels, during his five-year term.
Hollande pestiférré him
Hollande the plague victim, thealienthe one who still embodies social democracy, a word hated by many current socialist apparatchiks. As always, he goes his own way, without worrying about the dilapidation of his family. He tirelessly continues his ant-like work. He dreams of a powerful PS for 2027, without really believing in it, as the machine is not far from being scrapped. The mirage of the plural Left, with its unborn primaries, does not encourage optimism.
So, in this context, what does Urvoas suggest? That the PS has every interest in supporting a candidate from outside the party. Raphaël Gluksmann, even Gabriel Attal or even Edouard Philippe, and conclude an agreement with one of them for the post-presidential legislative elections, just to start a new cycle, far from LFI. And above all, to save the skin of Léon Blum’s party.
Some close to François Hollande even suggest that he conclude an alliance with the center, or even leave the PS, to accept the deep differences that oppose him to the current leadership. But can the man who was first secretary of this same party for eleven years make such a leap into the void?
