Narrowly re-elected to Parliament on Sunday, July 7, against a far-right candidate, left-wing maverick François Ruffin takes a critical look at La France Insoumise (LFI), the radical left political party he left before the second round of the snap parliamentary elections. Calling for no opposition between "the France of villages and [that] of high-rises," he accuses his former party of having knowingly abandoned the working-class countryside and industrial areas, to focus solely on youth and underprivileged suburban areas.
On the evening of the European elections on June 9, the left was in tatters, its morale in the dumps. That with a "be united," [message] a "Front Populaire," we'd be able to rekindle the flame in four weeks, brings hope. But, at the risk of being a killjoy, I said: Careful, it's a reprieve. There's a trompe-l'œil effect. The election system and the institutions have contained the Rassemblement National's (RN) surge, but the wave is powerful.
My Picardie region [in northern France] elected 13 far-right MPs out of 17, and it's worse in Pas-de-Calais [also in northern France]. And 57% of blue-collar workers voted for the RN in the first round. Losing the blue-collar workers is very serious for the left: It's not just losing votes, it's also losing its soul. And, in my constituency too, I have to say it with a clear conscience: I've lost 8 points in two years.
I had identified this difficulty as early as 2022, in my book Je vous écris du front de la Somme ["I write to you from the Somme front"]. The left was suffering from three "holes": a geographical hole, the France of villages; a demographic hole, the elderly; an economic hole, the low-wage earners. But this warning was to no avail. The situation worsened, and even tipped over.
Painful. On the one hand, there was the force of attraction of the RN: Opposite me, the candidate was [RN President] Jordan Bardella. For many people, he and Marine Le Pen are the embodiment of change. And, on the other side, a force of repulsion. For three weeks, we carried our cross, a backpack full of stones, we came up against a wall, a name: "[LFI leader Jean-Luc] Mélenchon, Mélenchon, Mélenchon." With the profile of the left, of LFI, over the last two years, I knew we were losing ground. But I thought that my figure, locally, would serve as a lightning rod.
Well no, it wasn't enough, not for Sébastien Jumel [Communist MP], not for Fabien Roussel [Communist leader], and not for others. It was almost comical: People would say to me, "We love your speeches, it's fantastic." "Wait, I'll call my wife, we'll take a selfie." And in the end, against [President Emmanuel] Macron and Mélenchon, they voted Bardella!
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