From our special correspondent in Léry (Eure)
Chance has made that when 20 minutes arrived at Léry’s “Popular Festival”, it was Juliette Armanet that the loudspeakers were screaming: we were therefore in a left-wing party. Rest assured, we also heard right-wing French singers during this event organized by the local deputy, Philippe Brun. So welcome to Léry, 2,000 inhabitants, in Eure, a department which elected four out of five National Rally (RN) deputies in June 2022. The fifth? Philippe Brun, therefore, elected PS-Nupes with less than 400 votes ahead of the RN in this constituency, however traditionally on the left, of the third crown of the suburbs of Rouen.
Here, the question of the reconquest of rural and peri-urban areas by the left, and of this part of the working classes that goes with it, is a very concrete subject. And so is the Popular Festival organized by the deputy: alongside speeches, round tables and political and associative stands, a “everything fair” is organized, elsewhere it looks like a garage sale or flea market, with entertainment for children, sausages, merguez and fries. “It’s really the fair at all of the deputy, this morning I was there at 5 am to place the stands”, says the elected socialist.
words, words
He has also gone door to door in recent days to do some repairs for the party, but even in this town which acts as a rare left-wing reduced in an RN department, it is difficult: “People tell me ” you, it’s ok but the Nupes we can’t take more”. For the RN it’s easy, they just have to say ”don’t worry, in four years we’ll be there”. We can’t really say that…” So will the left manage to speak to the public of the day? The morning debate, on popular ecology, rather emptied the place. That of the afternoon, on inflation and back to school, had a bigger success. On stage, what marks is that we melt we could hear the same interventions during a meeting at La Bellevilloise, a place prized by the political and associative left in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, in the heart of “boboland “.
“It’s true, answers very directly the president of the Young Socialists, Emma Rafowicz. But the challenge is not to have a different discourse depending on the place, it is to bring a political discourse to an audience that does not often hear it. All the same: we hear about the urban/rural opposition, with supposedly diametrically opposed concerns. The PS mayor of Val-de-Reuil, the neighboring town of 13,000 inhabitants, also contributed to it in his speech: “Avoiding this motorway horror (the east Rouen bypass, editor’s note) is in my opinion more of a priority than promoting inclusive writing and vegan cooking. Under the eyes of the stand of feminists from Eure, who are choking.
It’s the same song
Admittedly, the questions from the public – mostly asked by men – did not concern these two subjects but rather very concrete cases on inflation, school, suffering at work, medical deserts. “There are differences of course, but the concerns here are the same as for the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis, or even to go further than for French people with an immigrant background, explains Alexis Corbière, guest at Léry, deputy LFI of Montreuil, in the 93 precisely. We must have a discourse that embraces all of this. No reason that I have a different speech here. »
Another guest, Cyrielle Châtelain, president of the environmental group in the National Assembly, seems on the same line: “The speech is the same, it is the exchanges and the reactions which are not always the same. Whatever. On stage, wanting to press on the few victories of the Nupes, the deputy for Isère vigorously defended the constitutionalization of the voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion): “It is extremely important, an essential victory. A victory that is that of all feminist movements, of those who performed clandestine abortions before the law. It is a message sent to the extreme right. The square applauded loudly: who would have believed it, in the Eure too, women need abortions.
if i was her
Philippe Brun claims to have brought together 750 people “twice as many as last year”. Difficult to verify but there were people to follow political debates on a very sunny Saturday afternoon and that’s not nothing. In detail, the deputy is not fooled: “Of course it is above all the appointment of people on the left in the department. But some of those have still found the pride to say it. ” And beyond ? “It is done in small touches, recognizes Philippe Brun, but you have for example Virginie, who was at the RN and who now campaigns for us. »
Virginie, 44, a stay-at-home mother, admits that the meetings organized by the deputy in the municipalities of her constituency have piqued her curiosity. “I liked the way he spoke. At the RN it’s a bit of laziness: we are thrown slogans. But at the same time for me it was reassuring: the clear and rigid side where everyone says the same thing. Philippe made me ask myself questions and I went deeper. » Saturday she enjoyed the conference with Alexis Corbière: « What he says about the school speaks to me. But I also like what Manon Aubry, François Ruffin and Fabien Roussel say, their speeches close to the people. »
no express
“Go tell the people in the village, maybe even they are there and they are right: do you know that the RN is against the rise in the minimum wage? », Launches Alexis Corbière to the crowd from the stage. The “cultural battle” – the expression has come up several times – that the left must wage if it ever wants to return to power undoubtedly passes in part through this very literal proximity between left-wing leaders and local people, “responding directly to their questions, which are often very specific,” describes Cyrielle Châtelain.
“Of course, nothing can replace the massive side of the big media, recognizes Alexis Corbière. But anything that links the popular in the simplest sense to political discourse is fine with me. We don’t necessarily come to listen to the speeches, and then finally we still hear a bit of it, we have to work on that. There will be no shortcuts. “No express will take me to bliss,” said another French singer, Bashung. Left or right we don’t really know, popular that’s for sure.