The big maneuvers have begun at the PS, with a view to its 80th congress to be held in Marseilles in January. While his internal opponents, including a good part of those close to Anne Hidalgo, are organizing to bring him down, Olivier Faure intends to leave for a turn at the head of a PS, an ally of Nupes and Mélenchon, which somehow dreams of bringing the old pink house back to life. In a forum at L’Express, 1,500 PS executives, including a hundred mayors, 35 parliamentarians and 60 first federal secretaries support him.
To win !
The Socialist Party is entering a new period of congress which will end in January 2023. Obviously, this Marseille Congress will be one of the most important in our recent history because it will have to decide on our strategy for regaining power.
While from 1981 to 2017, the Socialists governed for almost 20 years, we have since suffered two severe defeats in the presidential election: in 2017 first with 6.3% of the vote; in 2022 then with 1.7% of the vote.
If the Parti d’Epinay was in phase with French society in the 70s and 80s, it gradually distanced itself from our fellow citizens through its technocratization and its divisions to the point of weakening this link which united it to the people. from the left. Historically, socialists have chosen to govern to “change lives” and not limit themselves to opposing and protesting. We are part of this left which assumes the exercise of power. But the French no longer expect proof of our ability to manage well from us. We have given this proof a hundred times both nationally and on a daily basis in our communities.
No, the French men and women expect from us today that we relearn how to listen to them, so that we can then speak to them again. That we provide radical responses to radical emergencies. Between a withering planet, a doubtful youth, a trembling world, a Europe that is looking for itself, despairing suburbs, territories that feel abandoned, despised overseas territories or feminist struggles that are more topical than ever, the Socialist Party must again, as it has done in the past, undertake and achieve the synthesis between responsibility and rupture. It must reinvent a Left capable of carrying out the radical reforms imposed by the situation of our country: a left of government which assumes social transformation because governing is not an objective in itself but the means of modifying the course of story.
The story on which we must weigh is that of a world steeped in perils in the face of which our values are our best assets. We are Europeans, we are internationalists, we are republicans. The story that we must thwart is that of a breathless Macronism whose “rebirth” is first of all an assumed right-wing anchorage. But above all, the story that we must refuse is that of an announced victory for the National Rally. This horizon must be our obsession.
We are in action, with our local, national and European elected representatives, to respond to the priorities of the moment: purchasing power, the increase in energy prices, wages and dignified working conditions, the protection of rights to unemployment and retirement insurance, fiscal, economic and ecological justice with the taxation of superprofits. But we are only at the beginning of a new story to be built.
Before winning electoral battles, the Socialist Party must transform itself to revive the confidence of those it intends to represent. It must rearm itself ideologically to face the challenges of multiple crises. It must reinvent itself to become attractive again.
So the debate must now open to answer it. But without taboos or artifices.
For our part, we will continue to support the strategy led by Olivier Faure. Not just out of loyalty to a man who had the courage in 2018 to tackle a task that very few then proposed to take up. But because we believe that the strategy he has designed is the right one. It is based on four convictions:
Never, absolutely never, has the left come to power without being (more or less) united. In the past, this strategy was called “Popular Front”, “Common Program”, “plural left”. Today it has taken the name “Nupes”. But Nupes is not LFI. La Nupes is a forum for dialogue between LFI, the PS, the PC and EELV. Who is offering responsibility for breaking this? Who can seriously believe that the PS can embody the left on its own? We clearly think that even if the union on the left is a path strewn with pitfalls, apart from the union of the left, there is no salvation.
The balance of power within the Nupes was established in the context of the result of the 1st round of the presidential election. It has already changed with the result of the legislative elections. Each electoral deadline must be considered with its own political logic. To continue and strengthen, the Nupes will have to evolve. We also propose to widen the perimeter to all social, associative and political forces of the left.
If we are in favor of the existence of the Nupes, we also think that without a government party like ours, it is impossible to win the majority support of our fellow citizens. We therefore have a major and exhilarating challenge: to rebuild the Socialist Party so that it once again becomes central to the left, so that the left once again becomes the majority in France.
Nor is bringing socialists back to center stage on the left. With the Nupes we have removed if not an ambiguity at least a doubt: the Socialist Party is clearly on the left. If a Congress of the Socialist Party legitimately leads to differentiation, we for our part want to reinvent ourselves while remaining united behind a First Secretary who, through his strategic choices, got us out of the announced disaster.
Let’s take the time to deepen the substantive work that the succession of elections since 2019 has hindered. Let’s organize National Conventions in the territories throughout the year 2023. Let’s rebuild a corpus that will make us the force of the left which, once again, speaks to all French people, including those who do not believe in us for years. We must understand and analyse, as some of our parliamentarians have begun to do, why and how voters from the working classes or living in neglected territories have joined the extreme right. We need to understand and analyze why so many of our fellow citizens no longer see us as a solution to their problems. We must finally put forward this left “to do” which in the communities we manage is already changing the lives of millions of our compatriots on a daily basis.
For our part, we never want to be the 6% or 1.7% Party again. We never want to be booed and jeered at by the very people we want to defend. We never want to fall back into the faults of yesterday, these heartbreaks and these corridor intrigues which paralyze the party and discredit all socialists.
Around these few main axes, we have confidence in the future of the Socialist Party. Around Olivier Faure, the new generation of mayors, our presidents and presidents of regions and departments, our parliamentarians, our first and first solid and courageous federals, and with all the activists who fundamentally believe that their party place is on the left.
Yes, we want a Congress that is useful to our party, turned towards our fellow citizens, towards those who think that the Socialists still have a role to play, a voice to deliver and reforms to undertake. With the conviction that having regained thanks to our work the confidence of the French men and women, we will be able to win again tomorrow!
* The petitioners
Marie Jose Allemand (PS First Secretary of Hautes-Alpes), Damien Allouch (Mayor), Marie-José Amah (First Secretary), Éric Andrieu (MEP), Benoît Arrivé (Mayor of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin), André Atallah ( Mayor), Michaël Aurora (First Federal Secretary of Gers), Nadège Azzaz (Regional Councilor / Mayor of Châtillon), Jean Charles Balardy (First Federal Secretary of Tarn), Laurent Baron (Mayor of Pré Saint-Gervais), Frédéric Beaumont (First Federal Secretary), Béatrice Bellay (First Federal Secretary), Dimitri Biche (First Federal Secretary), Joël Bigot (Senator of Maine et Loire), Michel Bisson (Mayor of Lieusaint), Dominique Bizat (Departmental Councilor of Lot), René Blanchot ( Mayor), Patricia Boidin (Mayor of Anneyron), Arnaud Bord (First Federal Secretary), Sophie Borderie (President of the Departmental Council of Lot-et-Garonne), Frédéric Bouche (Mayor of Villeparisis), Mickaël Bouloux (Deputy of Ille -et-Vilaine), David Bousquet, Fra nçois Briançon (First Federal Secretary), Luc Broussy (Co-President of the National Council), Hilaire Brudey (Mayor of Terre de Haut), Philippe Brun (MP for Eure), Sylviane Bulteau (First Federal Secretary), Daniel Calame, Silvia Camara-Tombini, Mani Cambefort, Rémi Cardon (Senator of the Somme), Olivier Caremelle, Luc Carvounas, Clovis Cassan, Bertrand Cavalerie, Johann Cesa, Yan Chantrel (Senator), Franck Chapoulie, Christophe Chapuis, Régis Charbonnier, Franck Charlier, Jacques Chesnais, Jean-Marc Ciabrini, Jean-David Ciot, Christophe Clergeau, Romain Colas, François Comet, Muriel Condolf, Christiane Constant, Hélène Conway Mouret (Senator), Kadiatou Coulibaly, Alain David (MP), Fabrice De Comarmond, Helene De Comarmond, Emmanuelle De Gentili, Arthur Delaporte (MP), Stéphane Delautrette (MP), Catherine Delprat, Jean Denat, Jean-Louis Denoit, Maxime Des Gayets, Tony Di Martino, Dieynaba Diop, Marie Ducamin Laurent Duporge, Christophe Durand, Vincent Ébl É, Iñaki Echaniz, Myriam El Yassa, Frédérique Espagnac (Senator), Christophe Fouillère, Michel Fourcade, Tristan Foveau, Franck Gagnaire, Brice Gaillard, José Garcia Abia, Annie Gérardin, Hervé Gillé (Senator), Violaine Gillet, Karine Gloanec Maurin, Cécilia Gondard, Marc Gricourt, Olivier Guckert, Jérôme Guedj (MP), Sylvie Guillaume (MEP), Patrick Haddad, Mathieu Hanotin, Arnaud Hilion, Antoine Homé, Olivier Husson, Olivier Jacquin, Victoire Jasmin (Senator), Aline Jeudi, Patrice Joly (Senator), Gaëligue Jos, Gisèle Jourda (Senator), Pierre Jouvet, Fatiha Keloua Hachi (MP), Bertrand Kern, Sarah Kerrich, Éric Kerrouche (Senator), Chaynesse Khirouni, Jonathan Kienzlen, Anthony Krehmeier, Christian Kubala, Samira Laal , Sandrine Laffore, André Laignel, Christophe Lavialle, Marie Le Vern, Beatrice Lejeune, Damien Lerouge, Michel Lesage, Monique Lubin (Senator), Victorin Lurel (Senator), Line Magne, Didier Manier, Serge Marcellak, Sylvain Mathieu, Nora M ebarek (MEP), Nessrine Menhaouara, Pascal Mercier, Georges Méric (President of the Departmental Council of Haute-Garonne), Michelle Meunier (Senator), Mathieu Monot, Franck Montaugé (Senator), François Morenc, Philippe Naillet, Corinne Narassiguin, Olivier Nicolas, Jacques Oberti, Marie Renée Oget, Yannick Ohanessian, Lionel Ollivier, Alexandre Ouizille, Nawel Oumer, Laurence Perez, Anna Pic (MP), Marie-Line Pichery, Christine Pires Beaune (MP), Christian Portet, Émilienne Poumirol (Senator ), Angèle Préville (Senator), Pascal Prigent, Sarah Proust, Eric Quénard, Claire Rabes, Dominique Raimbourg, Antoine Ravard, Claude Raynal (Senator), Vincent Recoules, Pierre-Alain Roiron, Philippe Ronar’Ch, David Ros, Claudia Rouaux (MP), Alexandre Rubio, Nicole Samour, Isabelle Santiago (MP), Maxime Sauvage, Jean Serret, Vanessa Slimani, Benoît Sohier, Alix Soler-Alcaraz, Lucien Stanzione (Senator), Isabelle This Saint-Jean, Melanie Thomin (MP) , Jean-Claude Tissot (Senator), Marie-Noëlle Tribondeau, Thierry Trijoulet, Stéphane Troussel (President of CD 93), Cécile Untermaier (MP), Simon Uzenat, Paola Valenti, Laurence Vallois Rouet, Jean Paul Vermot, Roger Vicot (MP) , Jean Claude Villemain, Sébastien Vincini, Fatima Yadani, Gulsen Yildirim, ….
The complete list of the 1500 signatories
