Minor currents in the Socialist Party deplore the missed opportunity for a left-wing government. The leadership assures that Emmanuel Macron never really considered appointing it.
The Socialist Party was once again divided on Thursday evening, September 5, over the aborted hypothesis of a Bernard Cazeneuve government, with the minority currents of the party deploring a missed opportunity for a left-wing government, with the leadership affirming that Emmanuel Macron had never really considered appointing it. “You didn’t want Cazeneuve, you got Barnier”: this is essentially what opponents of the PS First Secretary Olivier Faure accused of, after Emmanuel Macron appointed the former right-wing European Commissioner Michel Barnier to Matignon, several witnesses told AFP.
The debates of this National Bureau were however less tense than on Tuesday during a first bureau, when the two camps had opposed each other on a vote concerning a possible unconditional support for a Cazeneuve government. The supporters of the former socialist prime minister, who left the PS after his alliance with LFI, had lost their vote, the PS refusing to commit not to censure him. The mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin Hélène Geoffroy, in favour of Bernard Cazeneuve, repeated that this option should have been given a chance.Even if there was only a 5% chance, it was worth a try.”a close friend of Hélène Geoffroy explained to AFP. “It allowed us to show that we were ready to play the game.”.
A red line
But the Faure camp expressed its belief that Emmanuel Macron did not want to appoint a left-wing prime minister, whoever he might be, because “He did not want his public policies to be unravelled”. They also stressed that the issue of pension reform was a red line for him and that no left-wing figure would have succeeded in getting any movement on it. They also urged their opponents not to feed the Macronie narrative, which “wants to make people believe that it is the left’s fault if we have a right-wing Prime Minister”explained a close friend of Olivier Faure.
The Bureau, however, unanimously agreed on a censure of the Barnier government, whose LR party largely lost the legislative elections and which had not called for a republican front against the RN: “This is not censorship for personal reasons, but out of respect for institutional and democratic rules”explained First Secretary Delegate Johanna Rolland. Regarding the demonstration of September 7 against “the coup de force” Macron’s PS is sticking to its position: no national call to demonstrate, unlike the other parties of the New Popular Front, but everyone is free to participate.
