“We reap what we sow”: in Lille, PS voters upset by the Hidalgo debacle


Lionel Gougelot, edited by Ugo Pascolo
modified to

06:40 a.m., April 11, 2022

A snub that had a hard time passing. In Lille, in the stronghold of Martine Aubry, Anne Hidalgo achieves only 2.26% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election. A score that is all the more difficult to bear since Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in the lead with 40.5% of the vote, ahead of Emmanuel Macron at 25.6%. If the voters on the left have undoubtedly chosen the useful vote in this city, this result illustrates well the situation of a Socialist Party on the edge of the abyss.

“Where is the Socialist Party now?”

In the large, almost deserted hall of the town hall of Lille, a handful of voters and socialist sympathizers look crestfallen in front of the results parading on television. “Where is the Socialist Party now? I wonder. Frankly, here is the result today”, loose at the microphone of Europe 1 a voter still in shock to see the champion of the rose party collect less one million votes nationwide.

Under the belfry of a once all-powerful Pierre Mauroy, a real end-of-reign atmosphere has settled in while Martine Aubry, cloistered in her office, remains invisible. “We reap what we sow”, slice an ex-activist. “The voters still have in mind the five calamitous years of François Hollande. There is undoubtedly a useful vote which played in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.” So, it’s true, the PS project was perhaps not in phase with its voters, recognizes Sarah Kerrouche, patron of the party in the North.

“What we probably missed was a global vision project”

“What we probably missed was a project with a global vision”, analyzes for her part, Sarah Kerrich, local boss of the party. “That is to say that we have aggregated a certain number of measures which were good individually, but which may not have spoken to our usual voters.”

And the risk now, according to these activists, is the programmed death of the Socialist Party. “I am thinking above all of campaign costs. They will be ruined,” says one of them. So to survive, the total overhaul of the political strategy seems inevitable. “We will certainly have to deal with other forces anyway,” says another PS voter. But while waiting to rebuild the left, these activists have no hesitation. They will vote Emmanuel Macron to block the way to Marine Le Pen.



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