To those who wonder how Yannick Jadot and Sandrine Rousseau are doing, we can answer that they can spend three hours by train side by side without any problem. The EELV presidential candidate and his opponent in the second round of the environmentalist primary went, Thursday morning in Troyes, to visit two textile factories. The objective of the trip: to show that environmentalists can also be champions of the reindustrialisation of France. A way also for Jadot and Rousseau to show their good understanding, a little more than a month after a slightly tumultuous end of primary. It’s certainly not the first time the two have seen each other since, but it is their first outing as a duo.
The first step, at the Bugis knitting factory, does not put the tandem too much to the test: the boss welcomes Yannick Jadot with open arms and approves the defense of social and environmental regulations promoted by environmentalists. “We are lucky in France, because our electricity is generally carbon free”: even this sentence, which praises nuclear energy without saying it, does not raise an eyebrow. It will be more complicated in the afternoon at Sotratex, an industrial dyeing plant.
Sandrine Rousseau free of her tone
The boss welcomes Yannick Jadot and Sandrine Rousseau with a smile printed on his mask: “I have it until I take off the mask”, announces Jean-Dominique Regazzoni. Here they are warned. The person in charge will quickly become the advocate of “work value”, supplanted according to him by “well-being value” since the pandemic. Sandrine Rousseau, great defender of the 32 hours, ticks and goes up to the niche. Yannick Jadot looks at the ceiling. “There are too many environmental regulations! », Pleads Jean-Dominique Regazzoni. “Yes, finally, there are also dyeing products that are dangerous,” responds tit for tat the finalist of the primary.
“I am not tongue in cheek”, proclaims Sandrine Rousseau to 20 minutes. She has obviously decided to keep her freedom of tone, both on the move with her candidate and in the media. At the end of October, she had in particular refused to be categorical on the fact that if there was to be a union of the left, it should be done behind Yannick Jadot: “If I say that, we prevent the conditions for a rally”,
she explained to Ruth Elkrief.
Serene Yannick Jadot
Despite this, and despite the close exchange that takes place for several minutes with the boss of the factory, Yannick Jadot remains calm. He doesn’t seem so annoyed. In any case, he does not show it, and tries to iron out the differences between the two other interlocutors. A little later, it is moreover he who will be at grips with Jean-Dominique Regazzoni when it comes to Europe. Because we will not fault the presidential candidate: he is certainly there to talk about reindustrialisation and responsible fashion, but also to “show the united environmental family”. “If we want to bring the country together, between us, we must be in this process too,” says the MEP.
From this point of view, this Auboise tour went off without a hitch. The two ex-adversaries want to show all their “complementarity”, moreover use the word in concert. “Between us, we carry things over a broad spectrum, it is our strength”, believes Sandrine Rousseau. After all, can Yannick Jadot really do without the momentum that carried the ecofeminist candidate during the primary, and therefore some of her themes? Not sure. “But we will not campaign together,” warns the candidate, marking the difference with his sidekick of the day.
Team building in progress
Sandrine Rousseau, she seems rather comfortable campaigning with Yannick Jadot. We have in any case known losers of primaries more stammering in this exercise. “It’s natural,” she said. I put ecology first. The few post-primary frictions seem over. Did Yannick Jadot give him pledges? Is he finally sufficiently deconstructed in his eyes? “It’s a process! But I observe all his ambition in the matter, ”analyzes Sandrine Rousseau, who, during the primary campaign, had expressed her joy in living with a “Deconstructed man” to talk about his companion.
The local environmental activists present also seem rather reassured. It seems that this visit is already a “good start” for the gathering. The following ? It will be November 16, during the first meeting of the political committee of candidate Jadot, chaired by Rousseau. “I will tell you all the place I have in this campaign just after this first political committee”, she declared on October 28 on LCI. One way to say that the fire is still smoldering? “Team building is never easy, never won in advance,” whispered, cautiously, a local green elected official on the sidelines of the visit to Troyes.