DAt his town hall in Le Mans, Stéphane Le Foll is leading the charge against Olivier Faure, who was his deputy in the cabinet of François Hollande in Solférino. The former Minister of Agriculture never accepted the strategy of the first secretary of the PS consisting in lining up behind other personalities according to the ballots. In the European elections, Raphaël Glucksmann led the socialist list; in the presidential election, Olivier Faure toyed with the idea of putting the PS behind an environmentalist candidate. Le Foll sums up this strategy in one word: obliteration.
On the contrary, the mayor of Le Mans is campaigning for a clear and distinct affirmation of a socialist project, following in the footsteps of François Mitterrand, Lionel Jospin and François Hollande. Under their rule, socialism then triumphant imposed itself first, then negotiated. As one of his mentors, François Hollande, said, “it’s not the crumbs that make the bread, it’s the bread that makes the crumbs”.
Point :The PS is discussing with LFI to negotiate an electoral agreement in the legislative elections, after the disastrous result of Anne Hidalgo in the presidential election. He is therefore, in a way, subject to the rebels. Is this the culmination of what you call, for several months, the erasure of the PS?
Stephane Le Foll: The Socialist Party has entered into a logic of submission. By dint of considering that the other parties are right, the voters integrate this idea and no longer vote for us. For five years, criticism of François Hollande’s five-year term has become the only element of political discourse on the left, in particular in the Socialist Party. It is even the prerequisite imposed by La France insoumise to begin discussions: we must deny the quinquennium of Holland. So we fade away, we fade away, we fade away!
The collapse of the PS dates, however, from the five-year term of François Hollande. Olivier Faure recovered a very damaged party…
The problem is that instead of writing a new page ourselves, we let others write it for us. The PS no longer exists. He began to line up behind Raphaël Glucksmann in the European elections, and today behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon. We are witnessing the final erasure. At the PS summer school in Blois last summer, I was the only one to oppose this idea. I wanted a debate, I was refused. Everyone, from Olivier Faure to Anne Hidalgo, via Carole Delga and Martine Aubry, agreed with this erasure strategy. Today, we are coming to the end of this strategy and the whole of French socialism, its whole history, is coming to an end with these negotiations started with Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
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The irony is that French socialism was born in response to the radicalism embodied by communism, but it seems to fall behind it in 2022…
At the SFIO Congress of Tours in 1920, part of the left left with the French section of the Communist International, led in particular by Marcel Cachin, the other with Léon Blum, who, according to his expression, “keeps the old home “. There are then various electoral failures, including that of Gaston Defferre in the presidential election of 1969, before François Mitterrand recovers the scattered pieces and affirms the socialist position in Épinay, in 1971. He therefore creates the PS by affirming it against the PCF. But the current leaders of the PS have no political coffers. They confuse François Mitterrand’s strategy of union, which was a strategy of affirmation, with the strategy of alliance with Mélenchon, which is a strategy of erasure. They think that unity is strength, but Mitterrand had warned: unity is a fight.
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Yet there have always been alliances within the left, despite the differences. The most emblematic example is the common program of 1972.
Electoral alliances evolved with the political situation, but an agreement never meant submission and disappearance. At the beginning, the PS and the PCF established the republican withdrawal: each goes to the legislative fight on his side and the candidate who comes second withdraws for the one who comes first. This allowed the left to unite against the right, and especially against the extreme right. Then, with Jospin’s plural left, the PS became the force around which an electoral alliance was formed, with PS, PC and ecologist unions from the first round in certain constituencies. This is also what prevailed when François Hollande resumed, in 2011, the electoral agreement signed between the PS and the ecologists. Mélenchon is not at all in this perspective. La France insoumise refuses to play collective and to act for the union of the left. To beat the candidates of the extreme right, they never support the socialists. Faced with this radicalism, we cannot accept any agreement. Because the objective of Jean-Luc Mélenchon is clear: it is the hegemony and the disappearance of any form of political competition on the left.
The urgency for Olivier Faure is to save himself.
Olivier Faure rightly claims that electoral agreements with left-wing partners have led to victories in local elections…
It is the force that makes the union, not the other way around. By claiming to be socialists, many local elected officials have regained their seats. In the regional elections, the five regions that the PS retained were retained by candidates who affirmed their identity, before setting up an alliance strategy. This is the case of Carole Delga, in Occitania, or Loïg Chesnais-Girard, in Brittany. In Montpellier, in the municipal elections, Michaël Delafosse did even better: he was not outgoing mayor but won by proclaiming loud and clear that he was a socialist, contrary to Olivier Faure’s strategy.
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What are the points of the program of the popular union which, in your eyes, are incompatible with socialist thought?
Jean-Luc Mélenchon is an excellent tribune, he knows how to lead a campaign and lead others behind him, that’s obvious. But the radical proposals he defends cannot govern. The first divergence with the PS concerns the European question, which is a constituent part of our history. François Mitterrand embodied the European project as well as the Franco-German friendship with Helmut Kohl, when Mélenchon advocates European disobedience and distancing from Germany. The second divergence is its relationship to the Republic, to secularism and, in general, to democracy. I am for representative democracy and I am against the civil disobedience wanted by Mélenchon.
Finally, on the question of retirement, Jean-Luc Mélenchon campaigned for a retirement age of 60, but with 37.5 annuities. I note that it has evolved on this point since it now recommends 40 annuities for a full rate. But do you know how much it would cost? 60 billion euros! Mélenchon says that you can go into debt with the ECB, and that’s it! If the direction of the PS accepts the project of the Insoumis, it will then reject all the weighted proposals of the Socialists, which took into account the disparity of careers or the duration of contribution of each other, in order to be as fair as possible. What is happening is serious. For decades, the Socialist Party has advocated realistic solutions for the country; it has become a credible party, a government party. However, this credibility is now likely to be called into question with this agreement which advocates unachievable measures. The Socialist Party must remain a government party, while being in opposition to Emmanuel Macron, in particular on the pension reform at 65.
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Aren’t we witnessing a save-who-can of the PS? After all, the urgency is to save the furniture in the legislative…
The only question posed by the leadership of the PS today is indeed this: how many Socialist MPs will there be left in June? The urgency for Olivier Faure is to save himself. He is ready to sell off all socialist history for an agreement on 20 constituencies, it is unacceptable. Our deputies must represent themselves by promoting their work in the field and their record in the National Assembly. In the Sarthe, we are presenting socialist candidates in all the constituencies and I support our outgoing deputy. The Socialists must represent a responsible opposition in the Assembly, when La France insoumise is often excessive and radical.
So what should the PS do? Go into battle alone?
It is obvious that we should have sought an agreement between the historical partners, socialists, communists and ecologists. Then, it would have been necessary to look at the constituencies where far-right candidates are likely to win in order to have a left-wing Republican front. But LFI has never respected this republican principle.
In this party, we can no longer debate, we no longer even have the right to do so since Olivier Faure asked those who did not agree with him to leave!
How are you going to act?
I suggest that all those who want to reflect on the future of socialism meet on July 16, in the Sarthe. We can tell each other everything, discuss the balance sheet of the five-year term of Holland, the responsibility of Manuel Valls in the gap dug with the slingers, analyze the defeat, but above all think about the future. Everyone is welcome. The future of socialism will be written on clear thought, and with the political objective of reconquering the classes that I call “insecure”.
Do you think, like Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, that the PS should dissolve itself?
I largely share the analysis of Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, but what is the point of calling a congress to pronounce the dissolution of the party? I prefer to first organize an open discussion, like the Estates General, in order to imagine something new. In this party, we can no longer debate, we no longer even have the right to do so since Olivier Faure asked those who did not agree with him to leave! Again, this is contrary to the whole history of the Socialist Party. In the past, the PS had personalities with national weight, such as Pierre Mauroy, Lionel Jospin, Laurent Fabius or even Dominique Strauss-Kahn. They clashed within the authorities, no doubt. But they carried a common political line for France, and understood by the French.