Le Dot: Inflation, energy crisis, war in Ukraine… Rarely has a comeback seemed so explosive. Are you worried?
Helen Geoffroy: Yes, because popular cities like mine will not be able to fully play their role of crisis buffer. We did it during the Yellow Vests and the health crisis, but this time we are so impacted on the budget that the question of our ability to support the inhabitants is raised. We have a double subject: that of heating and that of food. In this area, too, the costs are constantly rising.
Do you have room for manoeuvre?
For my municipality, the crisis is 3 million to 4 million euros in additional expenditure over the next year. I will have to choose between slowing down investments, increasing the prices of our services (knowing that the people of Vaud have the lowest incomes in the metropolis) or reducing youth policies, which are essential for me. For the moment, we have decided not to increase our prices and to maintain our policies aimed at young people. I am in the moment when I re-examine all public policies.
The pension reform agitates the political world: do we need a referendum?
I am opposed to retirement at 65 and attached to the fact that hardship is taken into account. I say this knowingly, because many inhabitants are concerned in a city like mine. During the confinement, we greeted the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods who worked every day because they are the ones who are in large distribution, logistics, transport and maintenance. The country has forgotten this, and the government is telling them that they will have to work until they are 65! It seems to me that this is unfair. This reform should not be approached solely through financial means. The referendum is a means of exchange, but it should not be used to circumvent the social actors.
Labor value tears the left. How are you doing?
Work rhymes with individual and collective emancipation. I say this when I am in a town that is hit by a very high unemployment rate. I don’t understand the opposition between work and solidarity. Solidarity is a process, work is a horizon. We must not pit those who work against others. Work is a leftist value because it allows everyone to find their place.
Why are you again a candidate against Olivier Faure at the PS congress?
Since the end of François Hollande’s five-year term, the PS has stopped thinking about the issues facing society. For five years, the only subject of Olivier Faure and the national leadership was to make electoral agreements to save the furniture. There was never any question of reflecting on the debates that agitate the left. At the last congress, 30% of the comrades shared my observation, which turned out to be so true that, in the legislative elections, we made an agreement “save whoever can” in order to fish out a few socialist deputies. The national leadership was cornered after having made 1.75% in the presidential election. The PS is in the process of intellectually dying out. During our summer university in Blois, there were no intellectuals. They were with the other formations, left or right. While, for two centuries, the socialists have thought about the transformation of the world and the fact of governing, they are reduced today to being nothing more than a force of protest. It’s so comfortable to denounce and say that we should do more when we are not on the job! La Nupes does not offer any vision to the French. She is content to make permanent bursts of brilliance. Sound and fury have shown their limits in the elections. We have to go back to the bottom so that the French say to themselves that there is a way. Faced with the challenges and crises we are going through, the left is the most relevant to provide solutions.
Banning the Nupes, is that the only reason for your candidacy?
The coming to power of the extreme right in Italy and Sweden must mobilize us. We have talked a lot about the Nupes, but the reality is that it is the RN which has 89 deputies advancing as a block, with a vision of the country that I am fighting but which exists and is growing. This is why my text proposes to “refound, bring together and govern”. You have to start from what the French live to build a project; today we are not talking about their concerns.
What is your vision of ecology?
Today, ecology is for those who are well. We cannot say that the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods are not interested in ecology, but the way of approaching it does not concern them. Ecology cannot be seen solely from the angle of constraint. We must develop research to find solutions. The transformation of our behavior is not the only vector. Especially since, for some people, the urgency is more everyday: am I going to make it through the end of the month? The inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods and rural areas are not sufficiently involved in the ecological debate.
Is downsizing a solution?
I do not believe. The ecological transition is a source of growth, particularly in terms of jobs. But it is certain that blind growth, the fruit of blind capitalism, must be re-examined. It is part of the job of socialists to question what a just ecological transition is.
Should we put an end to the PS?
We must completely rebuild our party. Our socialist markers are territories and democracy. This is what we need to revive. My motion will be that of the activists, built with them. If I become first secretary, I will propose states general of the left and ecologists; 2023 will be devoted to debates to assess our points of convergence and divergence. The union of the left has become an antiphon because the people of the left are desperate. The means replaced the objectives because we no longer had a project to propose. I want a congress of truth where we get out of the postures, outrageous indignation telephoned. The country needs a left that can return to power, if only to rebalance the balance of power and reduce inequalities.
One hundred and fifty PS executives signed a platform called “Refoundations” in order to open a “third way” between the pro-Nupes line of the first secretary and yours…
The people who signed it were with Olivier Faure two years ago. I am delighted to see that they join our positions and that they share the observation of the erasure of the PS from the national scene. This is a first step: from now on, the first secretary is no longer in the majority.
Is the union with the authors of “Refoundation” possible?
This will require a substantive debate. We are not opposed to the union of the left that we practice in our communities. I am vice-president of the metropolis with an ecological majority. But the union must be around a project. I wouldn’t want our only common point to be that we want to change national direction. I want to change direction and I want us to address the issues that the left has put under wraps for too long. I think this is the congress of the last chance!
Downright.
Yes, we must take stock of the presidential and legislative elections. We must say things clearly so that the PS can influence the left.
At the PS, you are classified in the right-handed fringe…
I hesitate to laugh about it because, as mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin, one of the poorest towns in France, I don’t know what they are relying on to say that… I think my fight against inequalities anchors me to the left. We must get out of the intellectual terrorism which consists in giving patents to the left. We want to talk about what people live in the cities and the countryside, not just make big sentences. That’s what being on the left is!
How do you explain the endless increase in abstention?
It’s because we don’t have a utopia that collectively transcends us. We’ve gotten to the point where voters are wondering what it’s going to get them to vote. They no longer think of the collective. The relationship to democracy has become consumerist. We are all responsible for it: the voters, the elected officials, the candidates. Democracy is in danger. Even the municipal elections were marked by high abstention, while the mayors are the most visible and we have seen them scrambling to find masks, screening tests… Voters think that politicians are not able to transform things. Socialists can pose the utopias of the XXe century.
Stephane AUDRAS/REA FOR “THE POINT”