The leader of Place publique Raphaël Glucksmann gathers his troops and his allies on Saturday October 5 and Sunday October 6 in La Réole, in Gironde, hoping to unite his party in view of the next electoral deadlines and offer an alternative.social democrat” to Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the left. The head of the PS-Place publique list in the European elections, with his score of 14% which placed him at the head of the left, now wants to make the hope aroused on his line bear fruit pro-European and anti-LFI.
After participating in the “Meetings of the Left” organized in Bram (Aude) by the socialist president of Occitanie Carole Delga, Raphaël Glucksmann also brought together several figures of social democracy, with the stated aim of “reconstructing” a “social, European, humanist, environmentalist and feminist left“, he explains to Release.
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Carole Delga, Aurélien Rousseau and Clément Beaune planned
Announced are the environmentalist senator Yannick Jadot, several tenors breaking with the macronie, such as the former minister Aurélien Rousseau, now deputy for Place publique or the former minister Clément Beaune. And socialists hostile to the alliance with La France insoumise desired by First Secretary Olivier Faure. Like Carole Delga or the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo.
The boss of the PS will not come: Olivier Faure and Raphaël Glucksmann, close to the Europeans, have been at odds since the creation of the NFP. “Raphaël wonders if he was not used by Olivier to conclude with the one who wants his skin, Jean-Luc Mélenchon“, summarizes a socialist.
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The choice of Lucie Castets, a “fiction”
“Unlike Olivier Faure, I have one conviction: if the left wants to govern, it must free itself from Mélenchon and his cronies“, affirms Raphaël Glucksmann in Releaseburned by the violent European campaign, with the feeling of having been ousted at the time of the creation of the New Popular Front.
Although he participated in this coalition, his party only inherited a handful of constituencies and won only one. “When discussions begin between parties, we do not have the means to deal with“, recognized the MEP in The Obs. The 44-year-old essayist also criticizes a lack of compromise from the NFP. He refused to get involved in the choice of the candidate for Matignon, Lucie Castets, accused of “fiction“.
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In 2027, “it will be social democracy”
At La Réole, he will draw the contours of “a renewed social democracy“, explains Saïd Benmouffok, close to the MEP. And Raphaël Glucksmann is looking ahead to the 2027 presidential election. For this deadline, “it will be social democracy, and not a substitute for macronism or an avatar of left-wing populism, which will face lepenism”he predicts.
To do this, he wants to consolidate his party, founded in 2018. After the European elections, Place publique increased its members fivefold (nearly 11,000 members). “It’s revealing, Place Publique is the only new thing on the left“, underlines Saïd Benmouffok. “The objective is not to cannibalize left-wing groups“, but to expand to “those who may have been left-wing in the past“and to”disappointed voters“, he said.
A possible cannibalization of the right wing of the PS?
Raphaël Glucksmanncould be an electoral threat“, warns another member of his entourage. “We can put candidates anywhere” and in particular initially, in the municipal elections of 2026.
For the mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, “Public square will take activists to the PS“if at the congress scheduled for 2025,”the PS keeps the same line” alliance with LFI. “Raphaël Glucksmann knows that the congress will be decisive.” The idea of a “confederation” between Place publique and the PS is germinating in the minds of this anti-LFI left, deciphers an architect of this rapprochement.
“Radioactive for the rest of the left”
But for a member of the PS leadership, by becoming the hero of the anti-Faure, Glucksmann could reveal himself “radioactive for the rest of the left“. Can Place Publique siphon off the PS? “When there is a brand installed, we choose the brand“, rejects the same.
A socialist community leader agrees: “Social democracy speaks to a small militant elite, not to the mass of left-wing voters.” Especially since the weak link of the left is located “in peripheral and rural France“, recalls a communist.”Can Raphaël Glucksmann remedy this? No.” A socialist official considers it unlikely that local PS elected officials will take the risk of “cut yourself off from local alliances with the PCF and environmentalists“, to reach Place publique.
(With AFP)
