That’s pretty much the last time we saw them together. On August 30, during the first “Saint-Denis meeting” between Emmanuel Macron and the party leaders, four of them arrived. Who ? The party leaders of the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (Nupes): Manuel Bompard for France Insoumise, Marine Tondelier for EELV, Olivier Faure for the PS and Fabien Roussel for the PCF. There is no chance that the scene will repeat itself on November 17, during the new meeting scheduled by the President of the Republic. Because Nupes no longer formally exists anywhere. And because it is not certain that the four are there.
Just a few hours after the invitation was published on Sunday evening, the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, replied “no”. ” It’s no [car] I believe in democracy,” he said on Public Senate on Monday morning, adding that there has “never been consensus on any subject” with Emmanuel Macron. It is partly with the same arguments that France Insoumise also declined. “We reject the multiplication of these monarchical exercises aimed at circumventing the debate organized in its constitutional forms. In France, it is in the National Assembly and the Senate that political debates take place and laws are voted on,” judge the rebels in a press release published this Tuesday.
Topics brought by the left to the agenda
On the background, Both LFI and PS reject an agenda considered too right-wing, responding in particular to the demand (from the right) to make a possible referendum on immigration constitutional. At the Elysée, to protect the “Saint-Denis format”, we don’t want to comment. In the corridors of the palace, however, it is said that the broadening of the scope of the referendum, and especially the simplification of the shared initiative referendum (RIP), “are nevertheless subjects supported by the left for a long time”. And then it’s still concrete. Constitutional, but concrete. However, after the first meeting at the end of August, the secretary general of the PS, Pierre Jouvet, explained to 20 minutes that it conditioned the presence of the party following concrete actions.
Will PS and LFI be followed in their refusal by future ex or future ex-partners of the left? Nothing is less sure. Firstly, since there are no longer any real consultations between the left-wing parties. “We talk to each other, but we don’t consult each other. Everyone is responsible for their decision and their approach,” explains those around Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Europe Ecology – The Greens. And for good reason, environmentalists seem to have another approach. It is not yet completely official, but Marine Tondelier should respond favorably, but without enthusiasm, to the presidential invitation. “We consider that on the international situation, France’s position is not appropriate. So if we have an opportunity to tell the President of the Republic, that justifies going there. And then on the absence of ecology on the agenda, we clearly saw, during the first meeting, that for the subject to be addressed, it is better that there is an ecologist around the table. »
The communists have not yet given their response. But after the first edition of the Saint-Denis meetings, Ian Brossat, who has since become a senator from Paris, explained that his party was “not a fan of empty chair politics”.
The stupidest left in the world?
This is therefore a new opportunity for the left to display its divisions, even though the speeches are basically very similar. The environmentalist source cited above explains, for example, like LFI, that the government “is making fun of the world a little by saying that they want to dialogue when in two weeks, they have just made five 49.3s on the budget.
“We don’t define ourselves by thinking about what others do, especially since the moratorium” on Nupes, indicates Olivier Faure’s entourage. When everyone does more or less the same analysis, but in their own corner, we call it making blood sausage.