Started in May 2022, the book of Nupes history is nearing its final pages. The Socialist Party voted on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday for a “moratorium on its participation in the work” of the left alliance. The national council, meeting for six hours, approved this decision with 54.15% of the votes, denouncing “the permanent conflictualization” of La France insoumise.
This choice follows the refusal of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his inner circle to qualify Hamas as “terrorist”, after the bloody attack against Israel. “Olivier Faure breaks up the Nupes”: with a tweet in the form of an epitaph, the leader of LFI had also formalized in the morning the end of the alliance, denouncing a divorce “for personal reasons concerning me at about Israel (and) Palestine.
Faure ensures he remains “a supporter of the union”
In his speech to the socialists, Olivier Faure estimated Tuesday evening that “Jean-Luc Mélenchon was a unifying factor, but today he has become an obstacle”. The first secretary underlined “the need for a radical change in the way of conceiving the union”. “We did not sign up for brothelization. We are here to govern and transform,” he asserted, while affirming that he remained “a supporter of the union”.
The coalition has been in trouble for a long time. The hope raised on the left in 2022 has indeed been put to the test by the domestic violence of Adrien Quatennens, the strategy at the time of the pension reform, the war in Ukraine or the urban riots. The Communist Party has already taken a step towards exit on Sunday by voting for a resolution which notes the “impasse” of the Nupes and calling for “a new type of union”.
Fracture among the socialists
Within the PS, Olivier Faure’s opponents lobbied, in vain, to obtain the departure of the alliance with LFI. In the name of “clarity”, the president of the Occitanie region Carole Delga, the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and the mayor of Rouen – internal rival of the boss of the socialists – Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol announced on Monday “the immediate suspension of all executives joint stock with LFI”.
But others refuse to end the union. “We will not be among those who work to make the left irreconcilable. We will not return to the isolation of the PS which causes electoral defeats,” warned Boris Vallaud in The Express. The moratorium aims to launch “two projects”, for his part specified his colleague Arthur Delaporte. One “on our way of working in the Assembly which is not satisfactory” and a second on “the fundamental disagreements that we must put on the table”.