Raphaël Glucksmann has shown a bit of his hand. Having until now declined overtures from the Hollande wing of the Socialist Party, he finally gave in and appeared with the Old Guard, flanked by Hollande and Bernard Cazeneuve and their indefatigable vieux routiers Le Foll and Rebsamen, with a sprinkling of young centrists including Carole Delga, the regional governor of l’Occitanie. Does this mean that these other figures have decided to stand aside in favor of Glucksmann? Certainly not. Hope springs eternal in what I guess we can still call the center-left, even as its electoral base dwindles.
But winning the hearts of voters appears not to be the point of the game at this stage of the presidential contest. Rather, winning the support of influential backers is the ostensible goal. This meeting took place under the auspices of Cazeneuve’s movement La Convention, and the invited keynoter was none other than my erstwhile colleague and Nobel prizewinner Philippe Aghion, who spoke in favor of a points-based pension reform, steps to encourage innovation, and Danish-style “flexicurity” while denouncing the Zucman tax. I agree on pension reform and innovation but doubt that the Zucman tax would in fact discourage the latter, whereas some version of “soak the rich” is probably necessary if this bid to renew la deuxième gauche is to have any hope of surviving against its rival, personified by PS leader Olivier Faure, to say nothing of its nemesis, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I would be happy to see a real revival of this segment of the social-democratic left, but if that is to happen, it’s going to require an electoral strategy and not just an exhortation by a Nobel laureate who seems unaware that many workers equate “flexicurity” with acquiescence in layoffs in exchange for “job retraining programs” that don’t actually lead to jobs. There’s much food for thought in such proposals, but there’s also a lot of work to be done in scrubbing away the technocratic taint. This is work for politicians, not economic theorists.
Not to be outdone, Faure meanwhile joined his ecologist colleagues in an effort to revive the spirit of the New Popular Front 2024 version in the runup to the 2027 elections. The organizer was Lucie Castets, who briefly emerged as the PM “candidate” of the NFP in 2024, only to be rejected by Macron. She has ever sincee been working assiduously to extend her 15 minutes of fame. The present goal seems to be to impose a “primary of the left” (or at least the non-Mélenchoniste left) on the more centrist caucus. Faure and others in this camp evidently believe that in such an eventuality they will emerge with the majority of votes, and given the apparent lack of interest in la politique politicienne in the other camp, they may be right, but in the meantime the only image projected is that of a hopelessly divided deuxième gauche, in which neither les technos nor les politiques appear to have found a way to elicit much enthusiasm beyond their own circles. And while Faure may have convinced himself that accentuating his differences with Glucksmann, Cazeneuve, et al. is the best way to immunize himself against the charge of collaboration with the detested Macronisme, his efforts to find a workable compromise with Lecornu on the budget have thus far negated that strategy, as reflected in his unimpressive poll numbers.
But it’s still early days, even if the looming presidential election nevertheless overshadows the day-to-day maneuvering around a seemingly immovable fixed point that constitutes the reality of French politics today.