They hated each other so much, and yet, after endless days and nights of negotiations, the Socialist Party (PS), after internal discussions less rowdy than announced, joined this Thursday evening the electoral alliance proposed by La France Insoumise (LFI) and already approved by Europe Écologie-les Verts (EELV) and the Communist Party (PC).
At the announcement of the rallying of the Socialists, their First Secretary, Olivier Faure, immediately put pressure on LFI by placing on its new partner all the weight of the task that remains to be accomplished: winning, at best, the elections. legislative or become, for lack of anything better, the main force of opposition to the Assembly.
“Jean-Luc Mélenchon takes on the heavy responsibility tonight of carrying the hopes of the entire left and environmentalists”, explained Olivier Faure from the headquarters of the PS, in Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne).
It must be said that before the PS and LFI began their honeymoon to everyone's surprise, their respective leaders, Olivier Faure and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, spent the entire five-year term of Emmanuel Macron sending themselves to the figure particularly acerbic words.
And this until very recently.
“The PS?
They are useless”, thus decided at the end of January the leader of the Insoumis at the microphone of the Daily program while “governing with communists, it is not hard for me.
The Greens, it's a little more complicated but they made nice moves towards us, ”he rejoiced.
Equally categorical towards his rebellious counterpart, Olivier Faure estimated less than a year ago on France 2 that "Jean-Luc Mélenchon cannot be the one who brings together the left and the environmentalists".
In the mouth of the socialist, the list of crippling reproaches had only lengthened over the years: “excessiveness”, “populism”, “conspiracy”, “sovereignty”, or even “red lines”.
It is therefore impossible to participate in what he described in October 2021 on BFMTV as a "union for dummies" led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the presidential election of 2022. But after the almost zero score of his presidential candidate ( 1.75% of the vote for Anne Hidalgo), Olivier Faure's party ended up giving in.