The PS/Place Publique candidate won over Macron voters disappointed by the president’s right-wing approach, as well as Mélenchon voters frightened by the radicalisation of the Insoumis. Just when you thought the PS was dead and buried, a large space is opening up for the social-democratic and secular left in the run-up to the 2027 presidential election.

“Nobody saw us coming!” enthused Raphaël Glucksmann from the podium at the Zénith in Paris on 30 May. With ten days to go before the election, the candidate backed by the Socialist Party could be confident: the latest polls gave him 14.5% of the vote, with his list close behind that of Macronist candidate Valérie Hayer (16%) and doubling that of Manon Aubry (7% to 8%). “Let’s be the big surprise of this election!” he said to an enthusiastic crowd waving blue European flags, but also pink PS flags.

Like the Phoenix of ancient mythology, the PS has risen from the ashes, resurrected by the Glucksmann spark. Mélenchon, buoyed by his performance in the first round of the 2022 presidential election (21.95%), might have imagined that Anne Hidalgo’s humiliating score (1.7%) was the final spadeful of earth on the coffin of the party born in 1971 in Épinay. And yet: the list led by Glucksmann, which won just 6% of the vote at the 2019 European elections, has been climbing steadily in the polls since the autumn…

The collapse of LFI and the resurrection of the PS are the result of two opposing trends that are paving the way for a renewal of the social-democratic, secular, green and pro-European left. The first of these trends is the right-wing course of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term (pension reform, immigration law, backtracking on pesticides…) The second trend is LFI’s drift to the far left, woke and indigenist. Since 7 October, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s movement has proclaimed itself the herald of the Palestinian cause, without nuance, and sometimes without competence – on 5 March on Public Sénat, Mathilde Panot was unable to answer a question about the River Jordan, which demarcates Jordan and the West Bank… LFI’s elected representatives have accumulated excesses and excesses on the subject. On 18 April, after the cancellation of a conference on the Middle East, Mélenchon dared to compare the president of the University of Lille to the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. A week before the election, he described anti-Semitism as “residual” , brushing aside the terrifying statistics from the Home Office.

“I can’t stand Mélenchon anymore”

“I can’t stand Mélenchon anymore”, Nicolas*, who voted for him in the last three presidential elections, told us in early May. “It has become a millstone around the left’s neck. And I’m afraid he’ll stand for re-election in 2027. He says he’s going to hand over the reins, but how can we believe him? He sacked François Ruffin”, an Insoumis MP from Picardy who was casting a shadow over him, and “he put Manuel Bompard, who has no charisma, in charge of LFI”. Nicolas suspects a fourth candidate. However, in the event of a second round between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, an IFOP poll shows the far-right candidate as the clear winner, with two-thirds of the vote and a record abstention rate! “So, if Mélenchon reaches the second round in 2027, Le Pen goes through,” calculates Nicolas. “So I’m going to vote for Glucksmann on 9 June,” he says. If the LFI list fails, it may force Mélenchon to retire, the left will find another candidate for 2027, and we may escape the RN.

“We can see that Mélenchon’s aggressiveness is driving voters back towards us”, said a Socialist activist she met at the Zénith during Raphaël Glucksmann’s meeting. He knows this and claims to belong to “a pro-European left that does not go overboard”. The Insoumis activists questioned played down the risk of their leader being defeated in the event of a run-off with the RN: “We don’t know whether Jean-Luc will stand again, and in any case 2027 is a long way off…” says Éric*, leafleting outside the République metro station. Not so far: throughout this campaign, Mélenchon has insisted that these European elections are “the first round of the presidential elections” …

According to a survey by the Fondation Jean Jaurès**, 38% of voters tempted by Glucksmann in the European elections had voted for Mélenchon in 2022. The Insoumis leader missed out on the second round by around 450,000 votes. “A pain in the arse”, commented Adrien Quatennens harshly, blaming his left-wing rivals Fabien Roussel, Yannick Jadot and Anne Hidalgo for the failure.

The LFI staff never question the reasons why their leader’s personality puts off a section of left-wing voters, particularly since his outburst filmed during the search of the movement’s headquarters in October 2018 (“la République, c’est moi!” NUPES (Nouvelle union populaire écologique et sociale) was painfully born on 4 May 2022, with the June legislative elections in its sights. But Mélenchon immediately pulled the rug out from under him, calling on voters to “elect him prime minister”: a stance that reduced his allies to the status of vassals…

By June 2022, 151 NUPES MPs had been elected to the National Assembly. But tensions soon mounted: Quatennens affair at the start of the 2022 autumn term – the northern deputy was accused of domestic violence -, differences over pension reform in spring 2023 – the LFI deputies playing parliamentary obstruction -, different perceptions of the summer urban riots – the Insoumis refusing to call for calm, against the tide of the overwhelming majority of French people, shocked by Nahel’s death but angered by the looting – and insults to Fabien Roussel in the autumn of 2023 – the LFI MP Sophia Chikirou compared the secretary general of the PCF to the collaborator Jacques Doriot.

But the alliance imploded after the massacres in southern Israel on 7 October, with LFI refusing to describe Hamas as terrorists. Exasperated, the PCF – which did not wait until 7 October to take an interest in the Palestinians – agreed that the NUPES constituted “a dead end”, while the PS voted for “a moratorium”. Since the autumn, the left has been at loggerheads: Glucksmann was forced to leave the May Day parade in Saint-Etienne after being booed off the stage by members of the Insoumis movement and the PCF. Etienne*, a Socialist activist “since 21 April 2022”, whom we met at the Zénith meeting, puts things into perspective: “During a campaign, you always bash your friends on the left, because they are the ones who steal your votes. We’ll patch things up afterwards,” he says.

Boulevard Glucksmann

As in the 2019 European elections, the Socialist Party (PS) has chosen Raphaël Glucksmann, 44, son of the philosopher André Glucksmann (1937-2015), to head its list. In 2006, Glucksmann was close to the small Alternative Libérale party. And in 2017, he gave his support to Emmanuel Macron, described as “the spiritual son of the 68tards, embodying a way of thinking centred on individual freedoms”. It goes without saying that there is a gulf between the moderate founder of Place Publique and the volcanic “Méluche”: a Trotskyite activist in the 1970s, a Socialist senator for Essonne in the 1980s and former Minister for Higher Education under Lionel Jospin (2000-2002), “JLM” left the Socialist Party in 2008 to found the Left Party (PG), and then La France Insoumise. A movement that claims to be a “left that breaks with the past” and criticises the Socialist Party for having created a “supporting left” that has sold out the interests of the working classes to force them to swallow the pill of neo-liberalism.

The space being created to the left of the Macronist majority and to the right of the Melenchonist opposition is opening up a veritable boulevard for Glucksmann. The above-mentioned survey by the Fondation Jean Jaurès is edifying: while 38% of Glucksmann’s voters voted for Mélenchon in 2022, 30% voted for Macron! The leader of Place Publique is well aware of this scissor effect, promising at his meeting at Le Zénith that his left-wing believes itself to be “neither Jupiter nor Robespierre”, in reference to the president of the Republic and the leader of the Insoumis movement. He also recounted how a constituent had “thanked him for making family dinners more breathable”. “My daughter was voting for Mélenchon and my son for Macron,” the voter explained, “and now they’re voting for you”. “Hidalgo’s failure in 2022 could be explained by two useful votes”, Etienne sums up: “the Macron useful vote and the Mélenchon useful vote. But people understand that Glucksmann is now the useful vote!”

“While Macronism had built its identity on overcoming the left-right opposition, it is becoming increasingly one-legged”, writes the author of the Fondation Jean Jaurès study, Antoine Bristielle, explaining that Macron’s “centre-left electorate” is falling back on Glucksmann, particularly in opposition to pension reform. Those disappointed by Mélenchon who are attracted to Glucksmann are older and better off than the average LFI voter: “A fairly classic PS electorate of the last decade”, points out Mr Bristielle. According to the survey, the reasons for their “switch’’ lie in LFI’s geopolitical ambiguities: the “switchers” consider Hamas to be a terrorist organisation, they are attached to the European ideal and support Kiev against Moscow. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who shortly before the Kremlin invaded Ukraine downplayed the Russian threat and blamed NATO for the crisis, said at a rally in Villepinte on 16 March that Vladimir Putin was “doing what he believes is his duty”. On 25 May, at a meeting in Aubervilliers where Palestinian flags outnumbered European flags, he denounced “the Socialists who are running to the front of the line to seek war with Russia… Nuclear war is at the end of your ballot paper!”

Differences over Ukraine

Raphaël Glucksmann’s defence of the Ukrainian cause is a deterrent for the unwavering Insoumis: “He’s not left-wing and he’s for the war economy! Are you in favour of war?” exclaims Hélène*, a pensioner who is a tractor driver for LFI at a market in eastern Paris. The Jeunesses Communistes (JC) of the PCF in the Nord department even put up posters insulting the PS/Place Publique candidate: “Raphaël Glucksmann, a real bastard… wants to send workers’ children to war” in Ukraine.

Glucksmann accepts his commitment to the Ukraine and Taiwan, to the Uighurs and the Palestinians – he calls for France to recognise Palestine. He recalled having known Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist and opposition figure murdered in Moscow in 2006: “Putin is not just our problem”, she told him, warning him that the West would be in for a “rude awakening”. “His words accompanied me to Georgia in 2008”, where he worked for three years as an official adviser to the liberal and pro-European President Mikheil Saakashvili (2004-2013). “If you love peace, you must show determination in the face of tyrants”, said the candidate at the Zenith, whose campaign slogan – echoing Ms Politkovskaya’s warning – is “Wake up Europe”.

Glucksmann himself admitted that he voted “80%” like Valérie Hayer in the European Parliament. From now on, he will be setting himself apart from the Macron party with a much more left-wing programme, under the slogan “Tax the rich”. Above all, he advocates building a “European ecological power”, using renewable energies as well as nuclear power: “Ecological transformation is the great collective adventure of our time”. It will “allow us to live better and, above all, to live free”, as Moscow and the Gulf States “cannot prevent the wind from blowing in Saint Nazaire or the sun from shining in Marseille”. On ecology, Glucksmann distances himself from the Macronist government, which despite the climate emergency has gutted the Ecophyto plan, under pressure this winter from blockades by farmers affiliated to the anti-environmental, productivist FNSEA union (Fédération nationale des syndicats d’exploitants agricoles).

The success of Glucksmann’s campaign and the poor performance of Manon Aubry’s are a setback for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Time will tell what conclusions the rebel leader will draw from this. A week before the election, at a meeting in Toulouse, he warned: “Even if we don’t win, we’ll carry on anyway, so you’re wasting your time!” As for Raphaël Glucksmann, “potentially in a position to reconstitute a social-democratic space” according to the Fondation Jean Jaurès, he is no longer hiding his ambitions for 2027: “I’m not going to disappear on 10 June”, he promised his supporters gathered at Le Zénith. “I’ll be there with you to build this space”.

* Witnesses quoted by first name only prefer to remain anonymous.

** From Macron or Mélenchon to Glucksmann: towards a renewal of social democracy? Survey of 12,000 people conducted by Antoine Bristielle, Director of the Opinion Observatory of the Fondation Jean Jaurès (www.jean-jaures.org) and published on 28 March.