The French socialists join the union of the left led by Mélenchon

From the Popular Front to the common program of the socialist Francois Mitterrand in 1972. Historical references abound in recent days in the French press to describe the new unitary alliance of the left led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon (socioecologist). The Socialist Party (PS) French has reached this Wednesday an agreement with the Unsubmissive France (partners of Podemos in France) for the Parliamentary election June 12 and 19. This announcement practically coincides with the anniversary of the victory of the Popular Front of the socialist Léon Blum on May 3, 1936.

The only thing missing is the validation by the PS national committee to certify this union of the wow. The goal of the “New Popular Ecologist and Social Union (NUPES)“is to achieve a progressive majority in the National Assembly. And thus impose a government of cohabitation with Mélenchon as prime minister on the president Emmanuel Macron (center right).

The Greens had already joined this alliance on Sunday night and the Communists on Tuesday. The meeting of the national committee of the Socialists is scheduled for tomorrow and is predicted to be tense. If the pact is ratified, it would represent the icing on the cake for the new leftist bloc led by the rebels.

Recomposition led by Mélenchon

After coming third – with 22% and about 400,000 votes to beat Marine Le Pen – in the first round of the presidential elections, Mélenchon has made progress in recent weeks in the recomposition and union of the left, completely unexpected until a few months ago. His aspiration to become the next prime minister was no longer just a leftist fantasy. Now it must be considered as a complicated hypothesis, but not entirely impossible. According to a recent survey by the Cluster 17 institute, this unitary block of the left would obtain 34% of the votes in the first round of the legislative elections, ahead of the Macronist coalition (24%) and the far-right National Regrouping (24%).

Mélenchon and his new partners want to break the prevailing logic in the last two decades in France. Since the constitutional reform of the year 2000, when practically the same calendar was adopted for both elections, the legislative ones became a pure formality for the winner in the presidential ones. Macron, however, achieved his re-election thanks to the borrowed vote of the progressive electorate. Up to 42% of his voters in the second round supported him to stop the ultra Le Pen, according to an extensive opinion study by the Ipsos institute. Now the left wants to take advantage of this gap to lead the unrest against the centrist leader through “a positive alternative”.

“We have given ourselves the means to be credible before the French and this frightens the current power”, highlighted the rebellious deputy Clémentine Autain on the fact that the alliance has been constituted around the Mélenchonist program of the Future in Common. Among the different measures, now also supported by the PS, it stands out to establish the minimum wage at 1,400 euros net, a energy price lockdown and basic necessities, lowering the minimum retirement age to 60 years, the repeal of the latest labor reforms (also the one approved during the mandate of the socialist François Hollande) or the creation of a basic income (of about 1,000 euros) for young people over 16 years old.

Internal stresses in the PS

Perhaps more naturally in the case of the Communists and even the Greens, the alliance is a turning point in the history of the Socialists. For the first time since the refoundation of this party at the Epinay congress in 1971, they will not only accept being a minority actor within a left-wing coalition, but rather that it will be led by a radical and transformative formation.

In fact, this union is explained by the same law of electoral gravity. After the socialist Anne Hidalgo got only 1.7% of the votes in the presidential elections, the survival of the PS was seriously threatened. He might have lost most of his 28 deputies in the National Assembly (with 577 seats) and stay below the minimum of 15 to get a group of their own. That would have left the battered coffers of this centenary formation in a critical situation. With the new alliance, the PS will present its candidates in about 70 constituencies, the greens in about 100 and the communists in 54, while the rest will fall into the hands of the rebellious, who also negotiate with the anti-capitalists of the NPA.

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Despite the narrow margin of maneuver of the socialist leadership, the agreement has provoked harsh criticism from the moderate sectors of the party. “The reorientation of the Union’s policies cannot result in the destruction of the European project,” criticized former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve in a message on his Facebook account about the fact that the agreement includes the possibility of “not respecting some european rules“, like the limit of 3% of the public deficit. This alliance threatens to cause a “disappearance of the PS”, warned the former president Hollandewhose disappointing mandate is the main cause of the Socialists’ current electoral decline.

“If we find ourselves in this situation, whose fault is it? (…) Who is responsible for the fact that the left that had all the powers is now sunk? I tell these elephants to leave us alone, already you sabotaged the PS when it was at its best,” replied Pierre Jouvet, the national secretary of the rose party in the elections. Beyond the final result, this alliance will serve to the socialists break with the ballast of the past of Dutchism.