Benoît Hamon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, during a demonstration in Paris on September 23, 2017. -

Christophe Ena

Calls for a single candidate on the left for 2022 keep coming.

This time it is Benoît Hamon's turn to consider that his camp will go united in the presidential election.

The former PS candidate in the 2017 poll even goes so far as to put forward a name to lead this electoral battle: that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The leader of rebellious France "can be [the candidate of the left], provided that he knows how to make the gestures to bring together a political family from which he has methodically kept away in recent years", said Monday Benoît Hamon.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, already a candidate in 2012 and 2017, embarked on the presidential race a week ago.

But his declaration of candidacy was met with coldness, even hostility, by other left-wing parties.

Benoît Hamon is therefore considering other possibilities.

"No return to politics" for Hamon

"Christiane Taubira can be a very good candidate for the whole left, an environmentalist also but François Hollande, no, I do not think so", he added, specifying that he himself was "not a candidate" and was "not making a comeback in politics."

What is needed is "to find ways and means to have one or only one candidate for environmentalists and for the left," he insisted.

On the occasion of the release of his book

What it takes courage, advocacy for universal income

, the former socialist, ex-boss of Generations, also warned "against calling into question public freedoms" , contained according to him in the text of the proposed law of "global security".

“The French nation was built on a balance between freedom and equality.

Be careful not to see the pillars of the Republic erode, the fault of decisions that permanently call these fundamental principles into question, ”he explained.

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  • Left

  • Jean-Luc Mélenchon

  • Benoît Hamon

  • Presidential election