It’s on a “land where [il] suffered a setback” that François Ruffin has chosen to launch his political comeback, two months after his hard-fought re-election and his noisy departure from La France insoumise (LFI). On Saturday, August 31, the reporter MP returned to Flixecourt, a small town in the Somme Valley, located halfway between Abbeville and Amiens. In this red-brick city, run by a communist town hall since 1965, he came out on top in the 2017 and 2022 legislative elections, making the place the “advanced tip” of its strategy of reconquering the working classes.
Alas, two years later, Flixecourt was also swept away by the wave of the National Rally (RN). Apart from the rain, which fell in abundance, everything was planned to make its political meeting, entitled ” Earn “a popular festival. Inflatable balloons, food trucks and a marching band welcome activists from Abbeville, Amiens and Paris this Saturday. “There are a lot of new faces, friends from Paris have come. They wouldn’t have done it a year or two ago.”rejoices Pascal, retired engineer, loyal supporter of François Ruffin.
In front of hundreds of activists who had taken refuge in the Chiffon Rouge concert hall, the founder of Picardie debout! called for the construction of a left “towns and towers”, “neighborhoods and bell towers”so many expressions to describe a France cut in two between the metropolises and the countryside and to draw up, without naming it, the indictment of LFI, which he accuses of having abandoned the former working-class lands and rural areas to the RN.
Read also the interview | Article reserved for our subscribers François Ruffin: “I had to cut the rope with Jean-Luc Mélenchon to be able to breathe”
Add to your selections
Faced with the extreme right, ” The left must not, in symmetry, build other walls, the left must destroy the walls, put bridges and build hyphens”, he urged, in reference to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose strategy he has never ceased to condemn “sound and fury” ». “It does not extinguish the particular, what “racialized people”, Muslims, Blacks can suffer”, he added, still in response to the founder of LFI, who focuses on neighborhoods and youth, to the detriment of the rest of the territory.
“The big limits” of the NFP
The common thread of the day was the New Popular Front (NFP), even though Lucie Castets, its incarnation at Matignon, had declined the invitation. On stage, the former journalist begged the left not to ” reproduce the Nupes [Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale] », Or “one day we’ll hug each other” and the next day, « [on se lance] insults”. While France still does not have a prime minister, he said to himself ” convinced “ that it was possible to have “a majority” by project to push through a number of NFP promises.
You have 56.2% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
