Hello, it’s lunchtime in Paris. The Trotskyist candidate Nathalie Artaud (Lutte Ouvrière) is travelling to Lille (north). She has already 138 of the 500 sponsors needed to appear officially on the ballot.
What happened during the weekend? The two far-right candidates clashed at a distance on Saturday by holding rallies.
Why does it matter? Marine Le Pen is ahead of Eric Zemmour in most of the polls but the gap is not very big and announces a bloody battle.
Not only does France have three would-be presidential Trotskyist candidates, but also it has a true Communist one for the first time since 2007. Fabien Roussel is not polling extremely well (an average of 3% of the intentional votes), but he has very little pressure. Last time, his comrade Marie-George Buffet had been unable to rack up 2% of the ballot. For the first time, a Trotskyist candidate, – Olivier Besancenot, then a popular postman -, had received twice as many votes as a Communist candidate. It was the latest national humiliation for this party, founded in 1920. A mighty force in French politics in the followingmath of WW2, it faced an uninterrupted series of historic setbacks from the 1980s.
After such a shock, le Parti Communiste decided to band together with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a Socialist defector who was determined to bring together the left of the left. Mélenchon greatly benefited from the remaining communist network: disciplined and dedicated activists and elected officials, who were very helpful in obtaining the 500 sponsorships needed to run for president in 2012 and 2017. But Fabien Roussel got tired of eating humble pie.
The split with Jean-Luc Mélenchon was caused partly by a deep political divergence. When then centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron faced far-right Marine Le Pen in the presidential election second round in 2017, le Parti Communiste called its voters to beat the latter. Jean-Luc Mélenchon remained silent and added insult to injury when he sent a text message to the head of le Parti Communiste in which he said that he (or his party) was “death and nothingness.”
With Fabien Roussel, le Parti communiste has regained its independence. While it’s hard to identify differences between center-left Christiane Taubira, Socialist Anne Hidalgo, and green candidate Yannick Jadot, the Communist candidate speaks for himself. The greatest task is to appeal once more to the working-class voters. The party was once the mouthpiece of the workers until most of them joined the far-right decades ago.
Of course, the candidate advocates a sharp increase in the minimum wage (1,500 euros following taxes, instead of 1,269 today) or an increase in the number of civil servants in the name of defending public services. Like any good communist, he also wants France to withdraw from NATO, which he sees as the armed wing of a hated American empire.
But he also tries to enlarge his audience – made of older and less educated than the average population – with talking points that often cause a stir on the left-wing. He is the only one to defend nuclear power, a litmus test for the green movement. He is much less critical of the police forces than his former ally and unashamed to defend hunting in the name of “tradition” and “culture,” a discourse more likely to be heard on the right side than on the left side.
Fabien Roussel, a former journalist entirely at ease, speaking to microphones and cameras, traces a populist line when he says that he is “a bit tired of condescending intellectuals giving lessons, regarding what we should eat, how we should drive.” He achieved instant fame and notoriety when he expressed his fondness for a French food triptych (“Good wine, good meat, good cheese: that’s French gastronomy”). He was criticized by environmentalists and leftists who denounced a non-inclusive identity discourse. Radical activists even equated his formula with white supremacism. In 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had made headlines by cooking quinoa for a popular TV program.
The shock would be as great as when a Trotskyite defeated a Communist at the polls if Roussel beats the Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo in April. But if that happens, it will simply be because she will have run the worst campaign, and this may not save the communist tradition from the risk of oblivion.
Quote of the day
“Jean-Luc Mélenchon will not reach the second round”
The socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo went on the attack saying on Sunday that “Jean-Luc Mélenchon will not reach the second round” of the presidential election. “There is a left that is in incantation, in protest, in anger, and it is legitimate. But I belong to the left that accepts to confront realities in order to transform them, and the left that transforms is the one that I embody in this presidential election,” she added. This great divide between those two currents is the main cause of the weakness of the French left.
Video of the day
“Boris Johnson is the one I feel closest to”
The far-right candidate Eric Zemmour claimed on Monday that “Boris Johnson is” the politician “I feel closest to, culturally and intellectually” at a time when the latter is entangled in the affair of the parties organized at 10 Downing street in defiance of the health rules once morest the Covid.
Countdown
62 Days until the presidential election’s first round
76 Days until the presidential election’s second round
Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow
