Anne Hidalgo's proposal: save face failing to save the left

Nicolas Beytout 07:58 am, December 09, 2021

The political landscape has suddenly changed on the left since Wednesday evening.

With the surprise intervention of Anne Hidalgo at the 20 Hours of TF1.

Noting that her campaign was for the moment a failure (a last poll put it yesterday at 3% of the voting intentions), the official candidate of the Socialist Party has indeed proposed to rely on a popular primary, a vote open to all sympathizers of the left to designate the man or the woman who would wear in four months the colors of a united left.

The idea is to bring together all "those who want to govern together" to put an end to the massacre of this scattered left, dispersed, become Lilliputian and incapable of appearing in the second round of the presidential election.

During the day, Arnaud Montebourg (making the same observation of the total failure of his candidacy) had proposed to withdraw behind a common candidate to the left. In politics, an individual initiative is often nothing; two concurrent initiatives, it's a small event.

None, no. Because neither Jean-Luc Mélenchon who is on a much more radical line (and who hates everything that looks like the PS), nor probably Yannick Jadot (who thinks he already gave 5 years ago by retiring behind the PS and who believes that the time for ecology has come; he will soon be in this place), neither one nor the other should accept this logic of the primary of the left. Because, in this swamp that the left has become, if Hidalgo and Montebourg are today stuck up to their necks, Jadot and Mélenchon only have water up to their waist. This feeds their certainty that they must try their luck.

To date, and in the absence of any outline of a common program embryo, this primary of the left claimed by Anne Hidalgo therefore has no future.

Yes, to appear as the one who carries the banner of union, the one who is even ready to sacrifice her little person to a cause bigger than herself: to help the left win.

His calculation is to arouse a useful voting reflex among the militants and sympathizers who are numerous to want the return of the left to power and are in despair at the clan battles and the hatreds that divide this political family.

To tell the truth, the chances that it will work are almost nil.

But this call for union allows him to prepare his withdrawal, and "from above" explained to me last night one of the leaders of the PS.

Because obviously, accepting the logic of a primary is to install the idea that the PS candidate might not win.

It is accepting the hypothesis where Anne Hidalgo would be beaten in a vote of the militants of the whole left, and it is integrating this absolutely incredible reality that, for the first time since 1965 (almost 60 years), there is no would not have a socialist candidate in the presidential election.

As much to tell you that in the PS, this choice is rather thorn than rose petal.

Especially if we remember that Anne Hidalgo had refused to go through a primary in her own party.

All that to get there, it is all the same to swallow a sacred snake.

On the left, the rumor roars of a return to the front of the stage of Christiane Taubira.

Does this hypothesis fit into this primary?

It is true that there is much discussion, on the left, and that quantities of people are looking for how to overcome the current blockages and division, and for that will seek figures from the past, known to be popular, like Christiane Taubira.

In reality, Anne Hidalgo's initiative is also made to block the use of a Taubira (or why not Bernard Cazeneuve, who also remains in great demand).

The message from the mayor of Paris is: no need to look elsewhere, I can be the bearer of the message of union.

We will have to follow this closely: everything will simmer until January.

On the right and in the center, we know the candidates.

On the left, we will have to wait a little longer.