The communists join the French leftist alliance while the socialists remain unknown

The Communist Party of France has joined this Tuesday the left-wing alliance promoted - and directed - by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his movement France Insumisa.

He did so one day after the ecologists joined the initiative to obtain a left-wing majority in the legislative elections in June.

The communists' announcement comes as negotiations with the other major progressive party, the Socialist Party (PS), continue amid a growing internal division in the formation.

In fact, former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has threatened this Tuesday to abandon the socialist formation if it adheres to the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) electoral platform.

"Because I am faithful to republican socialism and will continue to be so, I could not, in conscience and responsibility, continue in a party whose leaders have forgotten their foundations and lost their compass," wrote Cazeneuve, Minister of the Interior and then Prime Minister of the Government of François Hollande (2012-17), another leader reluctant to the pact that the current socialist leadership has been negotiating for days.

According to Cazeneuve, who in recent years has remained on the fringes of the political front line, but who remains a respected figure in French socialism, “in Europe, the left that wins is a government left that confronts the real .

It can do it in the context of broad alliances, but never against the background of a program conceived and imposed by its extreme margins”, he says of the platform that has been forged in intense negotiations since last week at the headquarters of the rebels.

Mélenchon achieved a wide advantage over the other left-wing parties in the presidential elections: he obtained almost 22% of the vote, compared to 4.6% for the ecologists, 2.3% for the communists and 1.7% for the socialist Anne Hidalgo.

Thanks to this, he has managed to impose that it be his program for France, but also for foreign policy, with his promise to "disobey" European treaties, which configures the programmatic axis of the leftist alliance.

His objective is to achieve a parliamentary majority that allows him to be prime minister with a cohabitation government and thus contain the recently re-elected president, Emmanuel Macron.

"In politics, defeat does not explain everything and cannot justify everything," says Cazeneuve, who accuses the current leaders of the PS of having started negotiations with the Mélenchonists "without consulting the members" of the party.

On April 20, the PS's national council, made up of some 300 members, voted by 160 votes in favor, 75 against, and 10 abstentions to open negotiations with France Reluctant.

Since then, a minority but influential current has harshly criticized the decision, which it considers a "surrender" to the postulates of Mélenchon's populist left and not a negotiation.

Among the most critical are former PS First Secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, who has called for the party to be “refounded”, and other powerful regional figures, such as Occitania President Carole Delga.

The Socialist negotiators, led by Pierre Jouvet, reject the criticism of those they consider at least partly responsible for the bad situation of the party.

“Some want to continue believing that nothing has happened in the PS.

Haven't you seen what happened?

When we get just 600,000 votes, isn't that disappearing?” he said on Europe 1 broadcaster Tuesday before returning to the negotiating table.

“I am not the one who has put the PS in that state,” recalled Jouvet, who also stressed that in the presidential elections “the voters settled that issue, they went for a useful vote, the most effective” for Mélenchon to avoid a victory for the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen.

And that means, he added, that voters “want us to work together.

The left has known how to change people's lives when it was able to unite”, he insisted.

Issues such as the Euroscepticism of the Mélenchonists, or what many also consider a lack of serious commitment to secularism, are two of the main arguments put forward by the Socialists critical of the alliance.

To this is added —and it is what would be above all prolonging the negotiations— a dispute over the number of constituencies that the PS would have if it entered the alliance.

Contrary to the ecologists or the communists, who in the current National Assembly have not been able to obtain a sufficient number of deputies (at least 15) to form their own group, the socialists, with almost thirty, have a stronger negotiating position with respect to the Mélenchonists, who currently have 17 deputies.

The leftist alliance provides for the presentation of a common candidate for each of the 577 constituencies (seats) available.

Throughout the day, the rebellious deputy Éric Coquerel, one of Mélenchon's trusted men, accused the Socialists of being "a little gluttonous" when negotiating constituencies.

The signatory parties have agreed that after the elections each one will be able to form their own parliamentary group if they so wish.

Faced with the tension with the socialists, the negotiation with the communist delegation was relatively quick and was resolved on Tuesday with the announcement of an agreement.

Just like the ecologists did, the communists assume keys to the Mélenchonist program such as the minimum wage of 1,400 euros net, retirement at 60 years of age or the creation of a VI Republic.

In foreign policy, they also accept, according to the communist communiqué: "Disobedience to the rules of the European Union that are in contradiction with the application of our program, freeing us from the budgetary corset, from the directives for opening up competition, and introducing a principle of social and ecological non-regression”.

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