the essential
Like Karim Bouamrane who announced this Thursday the creation of “Humane and strong France”, many political leaders are founding their movement at the risk of weakening traditional political parties which are emptying themselves of their heavyweights.
Atomization is “the action of parceling out, of dividing oneself into parcels” we learn from Larousse. It is also “causing a group, an organism to lose its unity, its effectiveness by dividing it into a multitude of elements”. And the same Larousse cites as an example: “Atomizing a political party”. Are all French political parties in the process of being atomized?
On the right, the LRs exploded in multiple chapels. After his resounding departure, Eric Ciotti created the “Union of Rights”, the Lot deputy Aurélien Pradié launched his microparty “Du Courage”. At the center, Gérald Darmanin announced last weekend the founding of his own “Popular” movement. While Horizons, Modem and Ensemble pour la République have never been so far from unity, the number of microparties which form the majority does not fit on the fingers of both hands: the Radical Party, the UDI, the Centrists of Hervé Morin, En Commun of Barbara Pompili… not to mention the Macronist deputy Sacha Houlié who has not yet founded a movement but wanted to sit outside the EPR group. It is on the left that the “parcellarization” operation is most visible. Today Karim Bouamrane, the mayor of Saint-Ouen, briefly tipped for Matignon, will launch “La France humaine et fort” in his city’s stadium. A party which will be added to Place Publique by Raphaël Glucksmann, La Convention by Bernard Cazeneuve, After the ex-Insoumis Clémentine Autain, Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière and Picardie Debout by François Ruffin.
A roof of one’s own
What is this atomization a symptom of? Is this a cult of egos taken to the extreme? As if, past a certain threshold of notoriety, men and women politicians had difficulty coexisting with people as popular as they are. Is it the need to own one’s roof in order to make one’s mark there, to impose one’s ideas and nothing but one’s ideas without having to negotiate them with others? Is this proof of financial concern? Having your war chest, certainly meager but very much your own. Is it the desire for a quest for autonomy? A way of distancing oneself from a party whose political line we no longer completely share.
Whatever the reasons, this atomization, which does not concern the RN already structured around a single strong personality, contributes to weakening traditional political parties by depriving them of their heavyweights. Nicolas Sarkozy having taken a step back just like Valérie Pécresse and Xavier Bertrand, Laurent Wauquiez is now alone among the LR, Gabriel Attal appears as the only strong man at Renaissance, Édouard Philippe and François Bayrou have no competition in their respective parties while like Jean-Luc Mélenchon at LFI, while at the PS, François Hollande is the only one who can claim to have a voice of national significance.
Presidential stables
Now, these heavyweights, called caciques on the right or elephants on the left, kept the internal debate of ideas alive. They allowed their party to influence political life and exist in the eyes of voters without appearing solely as presidential stables. Now, everyone in their own lane, everyone seems to be moving in parallel. Would political life function like social networks which are made up of homogeneous communities who rarely communicate with each other? By atomizing the political world, does it not risk disappearance? Atomizing means above all “Destroying an objective using atomic weapons”, Larousse reminds us.
