From Brittany to Picardy, the radical left is tightening its grip. Particularly on royal issues, with a clear strategy: leave no space for those on the left who are trying to make a different voice heard. François Ruffin paid to find out. Attacked by his rebellious ex-friends on his positions on immigration and on his comic strip, considered racist, the deputy for the Somme resolved to correct the situation, with the newspaper Libération. Confirming, in passing, that the pressure works.
In Brest, PS MP Mélanie Thomin experienced something other than a simple incident on Monday evening. The meeting-debate on Defense, entitled “The Finisterians facing the war”, planned at the UBO, was canceled after the room was invaded by around thirty demonstrators. Among them, LFI municipal councilor Malick Niang, designated by the socialist as the main instigator. An elected representative of the Republic preventing a democratic debate, in Brest, city of the National Navy: that is the scandal, underlines the socialist parliamentarian.
A delicate score
Like François Ruffin, the latter however plays a delicate part. A deputy from the Nupes generation, she was elected thanks to the support of LFI in 2022 and 2024. Her revolt, during the vote on the 2025 budget, looked very much like a wink to her most radical electorate. She was the one who brought down Richard Ferrand could in turn find himself on unstable ground in the next legislative elections if the break with the rebellious sphere is definitively complete.
François Ruffin, Mélanie Thomin… or the difficult art of breaking with yesterday’s allies. What these two cases reveal is not a crisis of people, but a crisis of project. LFI has a line. Questionable, but readable. The moderate left still hopes to be able to please everyone: the rebellious voters on the evening of the first round, the centrists in the second. This ambiguity was tenable yesterday. It is no longer so today. In Brest, Monday evening, it was perhaps a stage of this clarification that took place. In pain.
