The reformist left's emancipation from the guardianship of left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon will go down as the key major political event of the start of the year. A large majority of Parti Socialiste (PS) MPs took, and have stood by, the decision to not vote in favor of the no-confidence motion tabled by La France Insoumise (LFI, Mélenchon's radical left party), the Communists and the Greens, which had aimed to topple Prime Minister François Bayrou's government. Far from qualifying this decision, several representatives of the social-democrat camp instead drove the point home, each in their own way, over the weekend of January 18-19.
"Jean-Luc Mélenchon is going to have to learn to argue rather than inveigh or threaten," said Socialist leader Olivier Faure in an interview with the newspaper La Dépêche on Saturday, reacting to LFI's threats of electoral retaliation. Buoyed by his victory, former Socialist president and current MP François Hollande trumpeted, in an interview with La Tribune Dimanche that same day, that, from now on, "nothing can be done without [the Socialists] nor against them. They hold the key until 2027."
In his blog, former PS leader Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, now president of the reformist left association Nouvelle société, insists: For him, what was at stake in the vote "was less to bring down the Bayrou government, which had secured the essentials with the decision of the RN [Rassemblement National, far-right], than to mark the autonomy of the PS, whose field of vision had, until then, followed on from Mélenchon's dictates, and not from the interest of the country or, incidentally, of the left." Speaking as a guest on the radio station France Inter's "Questions Politiques" ("Political Questions") program on Sunday, January 19, Place publique (left) party MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, for his part, felt he had been vindicated in his determination to "construct a political offer without La France Insoumise and Jean-Luc Mélenchon."
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