La France Insoumise awoke today to a new leadership, designated by itself without internal debate. Debates and votes are after all such messy affairs, and there’s always the danger that the good guys will lose. The new party leader, Manuel Bompard, close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, prefers “consensus” to the untidy chaos of democracy:
Manuel Bompard dit continuer de préférer le « consensus » plutôt que les élections pour éviter « l’affrontement entre une majorité et des minorités ».
Yes, it’s always a distraction when the majority is obliged to consider minority deviations from the correct party line. The efficiency of democratic centralism is not to be gainsaid.
So it seems that Mélenchon, having lost one designated successor, Adrien Quatennens, to domestic abuse, decided not to take a chance on having his party fall into doubtful hands, including any number of its more illustrious standard-bearers:
N’avaient pas été invités à l’événement les députés Alexis Corbière, Clémentine Autain, François Ruffin ou encore Eric Coquerel.
Capitalist roaders all, no doubt. How could one possibly allow the “spearhead” of the NUPES be swayed by such dubious allies. Mme Autain, rarely at a lost for words, may have been La Passionaria of the Mélenchonistes, but apparently this wasn’t enough for the hard core of the leadership. But the victim of these machinations is not one to mince words about her exclusion:
Fer de lance de la Nupes, notre mouvement a une responsabilité historique, notamment dans la course contre l’extrême droite, mais le message envoyé est de nature à fragiliser le rassemblement.
Will putsch come to shove in the coming days? Will the cult of personality around Mélenchon survive the desire for a different kind of party and a more collective leadership? Will the turbulence in LFI unsettle the weak bonds of the fledgling NUPES? The emergence of a viable post-Macron left depends on demolishing the leaden cape of Mélenchonism. Perhaps this heavy-handed Bompardist coup will provide the necessary spark.