Despite a deceptive victory in the 2nd round of the parliamentary elections, the campaign of the New Popular Front (NFP) was undermined by the excesses of Mélenchonism – a veritable scarecrow capable of scaring off secularists, universalists and social democrats – and weighed down by the purge carried out within LFI against dissident MPs who dared to challenge Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s divisive strategy.
This is a logbook of an election campaign consumed by the divisions and infighting that prevented the NFP from obtaining an absolute majority, despite the impressive momentum generated by the hope of a united left capable of forming the basis of a republican alternative to the perils of the far right…

Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), Monday 17 June. On the Place Jean-Jaurès, in front of the town hall of this left-wing stronghold (70% of the vote in the European elections), the New Popular Front (NFP) held its first meeting. The diversity of the speakers – from the far left to the Socialist Party, including economists Thomas Piketty and Julia Cagé, former CGT General Secretary Bernard Thibault and the inevitable Edwy Plenel – is supposed to illustrate the NFP’s ability to bring people together, an idea launched by François Ruffin on the evening of Sunday 9 June, as soon as the dissolution was announced.

With this alliance, the MP for the Somme hoped to thwart the predictions of the sorcerer’s apprentices at the Élysée: Bruno Roger-Petit and the other shadow advisers had bet on the inability of the left to unite. At this first meeting, the speakers appealed to History with a capital H: “This is not a vote like any other,” declared Bernard Thibault. “Don’t let this historic opportunity pass you by”. Manes Nadel (La Voix lycéenne), a secondary school trade unionist, dreamt of a Grand Soir, quoting Lenin: “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen! Be on the right side of history”, enthused ecologist senator Ronan Dantec.

The mood should have been one of unity. The purge carried out within La France insoumise on the previous Friday against five MPs who had been too active (Alexis Corbière, Raquel Garrido, Hendrik Davi, Danielle Simonnet and Frédéric Mathieu) was on everyone’s mind. Especially as one of the dissidents ousted was none other than the outgoing MP for Montreuil, Alexis Corbière, who was present that evening.

“This weekend has shown us that unity is fragile”, says Julia Cagé. “We urgently need to come together”. Not far from her, Mathilde Panot, leader of the Insoumis deputies, is giving her the stink eye. The same stern teacher’s face, immortalised by the cameras, with which she scolded Olivier Faure on the evening of 9 June, to remind him who’s boss.

In the audience, Antoine*, a 36-year-old nuclear safety technician who said he had voted for Glucksmann on 9 June, was “surprised by the extent of the union. From the Pirate Party to François Hollande!” He said he was “stunned and disgusted by Mélenchon’s attitude. A few days ago, he pretended to show restraint. In fact, he will never let Ruffin take his place”. When asked about Glucksmann’s sidelining – he was “invisibilised” on the evening of 9 June – Antoine was about to reply… But then fell into a deafening silence. As if revealing his innermost thoughts to a journalist could harm the NFP!

In the end, the Socialist voter sheepishly concludes: “The union can’t be perfect”. Emma, a 55-year-old health worker, “voted green” at the European elections. “I wasn’t very surprised by the election result, but very happily surprised by the formation of the alliance. I want to believe in it, but I’m not very optimistic… LFI’s behaviour is incomprehensible and out of place. But I don’t despair for my constituency, I’m voting in Montreuil and I’ll choose Alexis Corbière.”

Rima Hassan and “the poison of betrayal”

Rima Hassan then came to the podium. She told the audience that this was her “very first speech as an MEP”. From the outset, she unrolled the Woke doxa that so delights the indigenists and the sociologist bobos (“For the generation that we are and that is intransigent, there can be no left without the anti-racist and decolonial struggle, without the struggle against systemic racism and without the liberation of Palestine…”), but that so ruffles the feathers of the secularists, universalists and other social democrats. But never mind! For Rima Hassan, the hunt for traitors takes precedence over any other consideration: “Union cannot stand with the distilled poison of betrayal…” she insists. She therefore declared her support for Sabrina Ali Benali, an emergency doctor and LFI candidate against Alexis Corbière.

Behind the podium – and facing the TV cameras – LFI flags, Palestinian flags, a bizarre South African flag… But no French flag. Next to us, a voter does have a red, white and blue flag lying on his rucksack, but he doesn’t dare wave it.

In front of their screens, the French will retain from this meeting the image of a Popular Front hostage of LFI and obsessed with the Palestinian cause, a hundred leagues from their concerns. Videos of the stage decked out with Palestinian flags will do the rounds of the social networks – and of course the delights of the far right, who will mock “this far left that thinks it’s in Gaza”.

Alongside Rima Hassan, Mathilde Panot was all smiles and delight. Then François Ruffin and Clémentine Autain took the floor. On the morning of Saturday 15 June, Ruffin had already condemned the “sectarianism and stupidity” of the Melenchon purge. On the evening of Monday 17 June, the MP for the Somme gave his “full support” to his “friend and comrade” Alexis Corbière, vituperating against “a snarling and nasty left”.

At these words, Panot’s face decomposes like a soft cheese under a heat stroke. “In seven days, the parties have united,” says Ruffin. “We’ve already won against resignation”. While the other speakers were quoting Victor Hugo, Aimé Césaire and even Lenin, the Picardy MP showed his difference and his closeness to the grassroots, to the real people in his constituency threatened by the RN, by unabashedly quoting Johnny Hallyday – the working class hero whom the bobos have always despised, regarding him as a kind of Elvis for the rednecks…: “We’ve rediscovered the desire! We’ve got the desire to want again”, Ruffin chants. Once again, the MP, who wants to reconcile “the France of towers and villages”, is in a class of his own: he has figured out how to win back this working-class electorate smoked out by the neo-fascists. On Twitter, however, Insoumis activists are hurling insults at him, sometimes even describing him as a “traitor”. Ten days after this meeting, after Ruffin had described Mélenchon as an “obstacle to victory”, Adrien Quatennens published a murderous tweet about his former comrade, bluntly inviting him to join the RN!

Alexandre*, an Insoumis activist, justifies the non-investiture of those he calls the “ruffinists”: “Ruffin prepared this popular front with a millionaire”, Olivier Legrain, a former industrialist who organises discreet meetings between LFI frondeurs and PS, PCF and Greens elected representatives, in order to save the left in 2027. A “betrayal” for this avowed Trotskyite: “It’s a bit like the Republican Spring”, says the young Insoumis, who classifies the PR as “Islamophobic”. “Ruffin wants to refocus the Popular Front, with the elephants of the PS. They are ready to ally themselves with Macron. Look at Hollande’s return to Corrèze! We know what the result will be: neoliberalism and, in three years’ time, a far right that will be just as strong because the problems will not have been resolved. Ruffin, the PCF and the PS believe that if the French are racist, we should keep a low profile on anti-racism. We believe that there are only 7 million racist French people who vote for the RN. We have to stick to our line and get the abstainers to vote”.

A gamble lost on 30 June: between the European elections and the legislative elections, turnout soared (from 51.49% to 69.5%), as did the number of votes cast for the RN, which rose from 7.7 to 11.5 million! Even the historic mobilisation against the RN in the second round of the legislative elections on 7 July failed to halt this trend (10.1 million votes for the RN and its allies, compared with 7 million for the NFP).

In the end, the NFP meeting in Montreuil preached to the convinced… without convincing the others: by exposing, once again, Mélenchon’s authoritarianism, the sectarianism of his Woke and Trotskyite affiliates, and their Palestinian obsession, the image given was hardly likely to reassure the moderates, who had to choose LFI in the second round in their constituencies (as a result, despite the NFP’s breakthrough, LFI lost 4 seats compared to the 2022 legislative elections, while the PS gained 33 and EELV 12).

This is not a purge!

In the days following the Montreuil meeting, which introduced the worm of division into the NFP’s appetising apple, Olivier Faure declared that in the event of the NFP’s victory, the Prime Minister would be designated by “all the deputies of the left-wing majority”. To which Manuel Bompard replied: it would be up to the largest group to appoint the Prime Minister… and therefore to LFI, which had been allocated the most constituencies (226, compared with 171 for the PS, 88 for the Greens and 50 for the PCF). A catastrophic signal sent out to centrist voters: “I was still hesitating, but now it’s decided I won’t be voting. I don’t want to end up with Mélenchon as Prime Minister. It’s the same threat to freedoms and the same promise of chaos as the RN”, confided Carole*, a voter from the Gard.

On 20 June, an IFOP poll confirmed the differences in the way votes were carried over: while almost all (92%) of LFI voters in the European elections said they would vote for the NFP, only three quarters of Green voters (76%) and PS-Place publique voters (71%) thought they would do the same. In an interview with Le Figaro on the same day, Mélenchon justified his purge, talking of “MPs who have made a mess of things for two years”, and claiming to reward loyalty to him (“Loyal MPs, who have done their job without playing the star on the back of others”). Clearly, Mélenchon wants to run in 2027 and intends to weaken the competition in the run-up.

On Saturday 22 June, the Insoumis leader estimated that “the social-democratic bloc” formed by the Greens and the Socialists had lost 440,000 votes at the European elections compared to 2019, whereas “we, the Insoumis, are gaining a million votes from one European election to the next”. Even when he loses, Mélenchon claims to have won: it doesn’t matter to him that, on 9 June, Raphaël Glucksmann’s list beat Manon Aubry’s by almost a million votes (3,424,216 against 2,448,703)!

Sunday 23 June was market day at Place de la Réunion, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. In this working-class district, outgoing “purged” MP Danielle Simonnet is up against the candidacy of Céline Verzeletti, a trade union leader nominated by LFI. Between the stalls, activists from both candidates are handing out their leaflets in “an electric atmosphere”, says Vincent*, who is campaigning for Ms Simonnet. “We’ve got a problem and it’s called Mélenchon, he’ll never give up”, he sighs. “With one click and without warning, they deleted the 20th arrondissement activists’ working groups, social networking loops and WhatsApp groups, to prevent us from getting organised! What party behaves like that? Not even in Cuba, I imagine…”.

Gérard*, who is twenty metres further on, leafleting for Mrs Verzeletti, brushes aside the word “purge”, unintentionally parodying René Magritte: “This is not a purge, it’s the result of a collective decision,” he asserts. “Ruffin wants to refocus the left and ally the left with its enemies. We are truly left-wing. The media say it’s a purge because they’re all against us!” But even this activist seems aware that Mélenchon represents a handicap: “It’s not certain that he’ll become Prime Minister…”, he temporises.

An invisible elephant at Porte de Clignancourt

On the evening of Sunday 23 June, Victoires Populaires is organising an evening of mobilisation at La REcyclerie, a vast, trendy bar-restaurant housed in a former railway station at Porte de Clignancourt. This citizens’ movement is the heir to Primaire Populaire, which in early 2022 campaigned unsuccessfully for a single left-wing candidate. The organisers are asking their volunteers to encourage people to go out and vote, by phoning all their contacts and getting active on social networks. They have set up a “matching” system to facilitate proxy voting and are organising telephone canvassing. The aim is to win the “circus” likely to swing to the RN by just a few votes.

The evening of action began with a video appearance by comedian Guillaume Meurice, who had just been fired from France Inter. Then Manon Aubry (LFI), Chloé Ridel (PS) and Marine Tondelier (Greens) took to the stage. The sun is shining, and the smiles are wide: “We’re on the same line!” enthuses Marine Tondelier, who points out that “in Poland, the mobilisation of women and young people defeated the PiS”, the far-right party that ran the country from 2015 to 2023. Manon Aubry is almost overdoing it: “It’s a great pleasure to share this stage with Chloé and Marine. It’s not just a one-off!” Chloé Ridel says she’s “very happy to be sharing this stage with such strong, brilliant women. The New Popular Front is the defeat of Macron, who believed that the left was irreconcilable! In 2022, pivotal constituencies were decided by a handful of votes! We’ve got to go for it!” Next up were feminists Blanche Sabbah, Typhaine D. and an “Afrofeminist and queer” comedian, Tahnee.

At the end of the evening, we introduce ourselves to the organisers of Victoires Populaires, Floraine Jullian and Mathilde Imer. The question is simple: how do you convince voters who are reluctant to give their vote to LFI because they can’t stand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has just carried out what looks like a purge and is keeping his plans to become Prime Minister vague? At the mention of the sulphurous Insoumis leader, smiles fade and faces close. Mélenchon is clearly “the invisible elephant in the room”, as the Americans say, the huge problem that everyone pretends not to see. They take our journalist’s phone number and promise to “call him at the beginning of the week” to “arrange an interview”. Unsurprisingly, they never called him back!

The grapes of the debacle!

Back to the 20th arrondissement of Paris, on the evening of Friday 28 June, in the Saint-Blaise district. In Bilal Berreni Square, alias Zoo Project (a young graffiti artist from the neighbourhood who was murdered in Detroit in 2013), Danielle Simonnet is getting ready to hold a campaign meeting. “It’s a purge, carried out against five outgoing MPs whose only fault was that they were right before their time,” she tells us. “We were sceptical about Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strategy of cleavage for cleavage’s sake. Left-wing unity is essential if we are to beat the far right”. The irony is that on the evening of 9 June, “Mélenchon was calling for rancour to be thrown into the river!” This purge is “a real political mistake because it weakens the New Popular Front at national level. We should instead be putting all our energy into helping our comrades to prevent their constituencies falling to the RN”. Did she talk to her opponent? “I presented myself to her. I feel sorry for her, that she is being used like this. She claims to be the official candidate, but I’m the legitimate candidate, supported by the PC, the Greens, the NPA, trade unionists and tenants’ associations.” Communist senator Ian Brossat, for example, was present at the meeting.

The meeting began. The MP made no secret of her emotion as she recounted the brutality of her eviction: “I campaigned alongside Jean-Luc Mélenchon for a quarter of a century. On Tuesdays, the left united, and on Wednesdays I filled in the campaign forms. We met on Friday at the Place de la Réunion, and by then it was clear to everyone that I was going to be a candidate, so I started campaigning…”. Her voice breaks, her eyes are moist: “On Friday evening, at 11.22pm – this time is engraved in my memory – I receive an email from LFI, without any explanation, announcing that my candidacy has not been renewed.” “We are being criticised for wanting a single candidate from the left in 2027. A strategy supported by François Ruffin and Clémentine Autain. The left-wing political forces of the 20th arrondissement support me! The NFP is not just an electoral agreement, it’s political, trade union and civic unity.”

A number of local figures took to the podium to support the MP: “What Danielle has suffered,” exclaimed Josée Pépin, a retired feminist, “it’s a blow to the heart, it’s appalling. It strikes at the very core of people! We’ll need an explanation!” “The way we organise democracy within a party says a lot about the society we want to build”, warns ecologist activist Patrick Diaz.

At the same time, a few hundred metres away in Place Gambetta, the Insoumise candidate Céline Verzeletti was also organising a meeting, with Mathilde Panot and Sophia Chikirou providing backup. On the podium, MP Sophia Chikirou was furious with Danielle Simonnet, whom she suspected of having spoken to journalists from the magazine Complément d’Enquête. The MP turns prosecutor: Danielle Simonnet “is ready to make arrangements with the media”. Booing from the audience. “It’s a personal affair”, of “people who did harm, who spoke behind the group’s back, who betrayed the group’s trust, who organised sabotage against the collective”.

On Sunday 30 June, however, the voters decided: Danielle Simonnet came out well ahead, by almost twenty points and more than 10,000 votes over her rival (42% to 22.28%). This clear-cut verdict did not deter LFI from stubbornly maintaining Verzeletti’s candidacy! But in the end, the determination of the Melenchonists did not prevent Danielle Simonet from being re-elected with an overwhelming majority of 74.1%, just like Hendrik Davi (65.9%) in Marseille and Alexis Corbière (57.1%) in Seine-Saint Denis.

Loïc*, a CGT activist and industrial tribunal judge in his sixties, a veteran of trade union struggles and a connoisseur of the far left, is a disillusioned observer of this poisonous atmosphere. Like some analysts (Dominique Reynié for Fondapol), he suspects Jean-Luc Mélenchon of “deliberately sabotaging” the NFP campaign: “It’s pure Lambertist strategy”, the name of the Trotskyist movement from which the leader of the Insoumis came. The aim is to “provoke the advent of fascism, which will be the trigger for revolution”. Quite a programme…

* The first names of the speakers have been changed to guarantee their anonymity.