Frangy-en-Bresse (France) (AFP)

He fell in Frangy seven years ago with his "cuvée du rectification productive": Arnaud Montebourg returned on Saturday to play at home to build his "remountada" with his faithful and the disappointed of a "left" that he aspires to "recompose" for 2022.

"People of the left, you the orphan, who is lost (...), speechless, stand up! People of the left join me, unite with the French, together we can win", launches the former minister on a stage erected on a football field with freshly mown grass to present his "remountada".

In shirt sleeves, denim pants and dark tie, greeted with the cry of "President!", He presents himself as a "free man", "on the left", "without a party", promising never to "renew (his) again. faults and (his) errors ", as evidenced by the change of atmosphere at Frangy.

This year, no cuvée de la "remorada", no festive Burgundian ban and no forced Burgundy accent either when he greets his relatives by calling them by their first names.

But the name of François Hollande is booed twice by part of the public.

After the "France of the sub-prefectures" defended during the announcement of his candidacy at the beginning of September in Clamecy (Yonne), he addresses the left to "resume the path of the national story from which we were expelled".

Former socialist minister Arnaud Montebourg, presidential candidate, arrives at the Rose Festival in Frangy-en-Bresse (Saône-et-Loire), September 25, 2021 JEFF PACHOUD AFP

In his speech, he addresses in turn to "workers whose left has turned away", to "single mothers", to "young CDD" or to "new slaves (...) of Uber, of Deliveroo ", as well as to" civil servants whose salaries are stagnant ".

Its objective is to "recompose the left which speaks to France and the French", explains one of his advisers, who reports about a hundred sponsorships already obtained by his candidate for the presidential election of 2022.

"He is the only one capable of creating momentum on the left," explains this source, who categorically denies that he intends to withdraw from the race after a few months.

- "Awakened" values

In his speech, he also addresses early supporters such as Frédéric Cannard, who has been running the refreshment bar and taking part in the Rose Festival since 2004.

"I left the PS in 2014 after the closure of the blast furnaces in Florange," he told AFP, also convinced that the former minister will go to the end.

Nicole Clément, who comes from Mâcon, also admits to having returned her PS card under the Holland five-year term.

She recently heard Arnaud Montebourg on the radio who "awakened our values".

But there are also Socialists who made an appointment in Frangy, like the former minister and vice-president of the Senate Laurence Rossignol: "He is capable of getting the left out of its sclerosis", explains t -she.

She ensures "live well" her support to Arnaud Montebourg and not to Anne Hidalgo, the PS mayor of Paris who has also embarked on the race for the Elysee by promising to "embark" sooner or later with her Arnaud Montebourg .

"Unless it is the other way around", quips the PS senator of Saône-et-Loire Jérôme Durain, alluding to the polls which do not give the mayor of Paris a dynamic and who joined Frangy with his colleague from the Loire Jean-Claude Tissot, the former PS Henri Cabanel (Hérault), as well as the PS MP Cécile Untermaier, who opened the speeches.

"I am delighted to find in Frangy faces which had disappeared from the meetings of the PS", congratulates Mr. Durain.

Ex-LFI, François Coq, he perceives a dynamic in the process of materializing around the former minister who "extends that born with Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2017" and that the candidate of France rebellious, in his eyes, "is no longer able to embody".

"It is for the moment of the order of the shudder, but there is something happening," he assures, even if the polls do not really reflect it.

Roptin Alan, a 29-year-old Norman who put on a striped sweater to join Frangy from the English Channel, assures us "to find himself in the ideas of Montebourg, such as the nationalization of the highways".

© 2021 AFP