Rémi Branco is PS vice-president of Lot and former chief of staff of Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll. He has just published
Far from the cities, far from the heart, does the left want to return to the countryside?
(ed. L’Aube – Jean Jaurès Foundation).
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LE FIGARO. - According to you, the left runs the risk of disappearing in the countryside. What criticisms do you level at him?
Rémi BRANCO. -
For two or three years, I have observed a gap between what rural residents tell me, their problems, their expectations and on the other hand, the speeches of left-wing national leaders.
This discrepancy, today, is really starting to pose a problem since we find ourselves with people who are switching quite massively towards the RN vote.
I wanted to write this book to sound the alarm and tell the left of the need to get back to reality, to the problems that people experience in rural areas.
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For example, the left took several years before addressing the issue of medical deserts, even if deputies like Guillaume Garot, who took up this subject, symbol of the enormous gap with urban territories.
And no left-wing candidate in 2022 has made it a campaign theme.
But did the golden age of the triumphant rural left already exist?
No, there was never a golden age, even if the left still had a place in rural areas, it was respected because it had local elected officials.
Then, she defended a sort of idea of territorial equality.
Furthermore, left-wing leaders had rural roots: François Mitterrand, Lionel Jospin in Cintegabelle, Ségolène Royal in Deux-Sèvres, François Hollande in Corrèze.
They are all national leaders who of course had a voice in Paris while setting foot in their rural territory.
They weren't completely disconnected.
Today, we have the impression that we have a national left, on the one hand, which talks about urban issues and on the other, rural elected officials who try to manage to deal with the most pressing needs.
For rural France, the left-wing elected representatives in the Assembly, who are constantly agitating, are seen in some way as the bazaar camp.
This is the reason why the French can vote left at the local level, but not in national elections.
Several environmental activists criticized the “laxity” of the police towards farmers who dumped manure in front of the prefectures, in comparison with the supposed “repression” of environmental activists. Is this attitude symptomatic of the break between the left and the rural world?
Everyone is inconsistent.
The State is incoherent because it cannot, on the one hand, show severity towards activists and, on the other, be lax with farmers who have damaged public furniture.
So you have to be consistent.
Equal treatment is necessary.
By attempting to redefine the Republic as the regime granting the inalienable right to laziness, is the left committing political suicide?
Two questions arise.
The first is unhappiness at work.
Many French people are unhappy in their jobs, which creates a divide between the unemployed, who would like to work but cannot, and those who work but do not thrive there.
The left must take up this fight, that of work and dignity.
Saying that we are giving up work is anything but an answer.
Rémi Branco
Secondly, the question arises of the connection between personal development, personal life, particularly family life, and work.
The 35 Hours only responded incompletely and the left must provide answers.
The right to be lazy does not address this problem of articulation between family life and professional life.
It is an inversion of values.
Historically, the left defends work, work against rent, work against capital which creates profits while sleeping.
The left must take up this fight, that of work and dignity.
Saying that we are giving up work is anything but an answer.
Is the rise in fuel prices, a blind spot for the left, symbolic of this disconnection with rural France?
I can't believe it took the left three years to understand that going from €1.30 to €2 per liter changes life.
When you have a salary of €1,200-1,250 and you travel on average 21 km per day to go to work, or nearly 50 km for a couple, it changes your life.
Fuel adds to the difficulties of finding accommodation, food, or enjoying a minimum of family leisure time.
Furthermore, I found indecent the time spent in the media by politicians, from the left as well as the right, debating the price of the Navigo pass or the metro ticket during the Olympic Games, like that of SUV parking in Paris.
I would have preferred the debates to focus on the difficulties of French people forced to use their car to go to work, to take a sick relative to the hospital, and the difficulties of accessing medical, sporting or cultural infrastructures.
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Access to public transport is one of the greatest inequalities between urban and rural or peri-urban areas.
This is also the case for energy.
When you live in a city, you heat yourself differently than someone who lives in a country house, who is more forced to use fuel oil, for example.
On average, a person who lives in the countryside spends twice as much on heating as someone who lives in a city building.
These difficulties are painless for a metropolitan resident.
Furthermore, I regret that the left has abandoned the question of agriculture, as if it considered that farmers were a lost cause.
We need more than ever the redistribution of aid and support for agroecology on the regulation of international treaties, on the redistribution of aid, on agroecology.
Can rural France be seen as a homogeneous whole?
There is not one campaign, but campaigns which have very different realities.
A resident of the Landes countryside does not encounter the same problems as someone close to the coast.
But there are variations: public transport, difficulty accessing care (city medicine, hospitals), housing.
The left must talk about immigration, without placing itself solely on a moral level.
Rémi Branco
Another blind spot in the public debate is the question of maternity wards.
In a very large number of sub-prefectures, French people are wondering if it is not preferable to move temporarily in order to give birth.
Isn't the feeling of cultural dispossession of a part of France also a blind spot for the left? can the left regain the countryside without talking about immigration?
The left must talk about immigration, without placing itself solely on a moral level.
In the countryside, the population is aging, and who will take care of our aging seniors tomorrow?
Who will take over the farms?
We will need, as always, new people on our territory to do these jobs, to take care of our elders, to take care of agriculture, to take care of our factories.
I believe that the left must construct a discourse on immigration where it explains that it can be beneficial for our country, and should not be perceived as a danger.
The fact remains that France, and particularly the left, failed at integration.
It's up to the left to work on it to be credible on this issue.
We start from afar because today, immigration is seen by many French people, often far from immigrant populations, as a danger.
I think we need to explain that this is an opportunity and that we need it.
Today, we need new people in our territory.
Quite simply, what we have failed to the point of failing in France, particularly on the left, it must be said, is integration.
And on the integration that the left must work for tomorrow, to be credible on this subject.