Municipal elections, the Socialist Party's last chance?

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By: Marine de La Moissonnière Follow

The municipal elections will be a decisive ballot for the PS. The territorial anchoring of the party constitutes the last rags of its past splendor. The socialists want at all costs to preserve their territorial anchorage and stop the fall of the PS.

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It is a question of saving the last family jewels and the socialist pot is still beautiful: 13 cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants; 202 municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants; in total, nearly 30,000 local elected officials across France. The PS has a good chance of re-electing its outgoing mayors and retaining its strongholds: Paris (especially since the majority candidate, Benjamin Griveaux, had to withdraw), Rennes, Nantes, Lille ... But elsewhere , the socialists cannot win on their own. In many cities, they had to fade behind left-wing alliances.

In this strategy of union, the PS found itself confronted with a new adversary: ​​the environmentalists. Yesterday's partners, boosted by their good score in the Europeans, decided to go it alone in most major French cities. Where the Greens have agreed to form alliances, as in Besançon, for example, they lead the dance and the list!

Green-pink alliances in the second round

However, in the second round, the Greens will need the socialists, which reassures the boss of the PS, Olivier Faure. " Green people cannot win without us when the opposite is not true, " he repeats. But he also says it clearly. The PS will tie agreements and will withdraw wherever it is necessary. " I will not take responsibility for losing the left, " insists the first secretary in what looks somewhat like an admission of weakness or in any case, an assumed awareness of the current place of the PS within the left.

Socialist hegemony is well and truly over, acquiesces someone close to Anne Hidalgo for whom the party is dead. " We have tipped it into the past and we will not be able to restore its brand image ," he explains. This is also why the mayor of Paris does not present himself as the candidate of the PS. Exit the fist and the rose on its campaign leaflets!

" The PS is dead "

However, all is not finished for the socialists, according to this lieutenant of Anne Hidalgo. " We must now rebuild ourselves on the basis of our ideological base by modernizing it and by allying with others, " he explains. Only in this way will the socialists win victories at regional and departmental levels. An opinion shared by Olivier Faure who advocates going beyond, but not erasing. This transformation can only begin after the municipal elections, depending on the balance of power from the ballot box, and on condition, warns an elephant, that the socialists regain the sense of the collective and finally display a united front.

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• 2020 municipal elections
• Paris

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