We Need to Win Our People Back
- David Broder
French workers’ top electoral choice isn’t Marine Le Pen, but abstention. To mobilize their support, the Left needs to look beyond the workplace alone — and answer a deeper mood of alienation.
Paris, May 2015.Richard Allaway / Flickr
It’s been decades since the “red fortresses” of industrial France handed millions of votes to the Communist and Socialist parties. Yet today, as France polarizes between President Emmanuel Macron and the far right around Marine Le Pen, the Left’s social roots seem to be weakening further. In the 2017 election Jean-Luc Mélenchon bucked this trend, scoring 19.6 percent of the vote. Yet in May’s European elections, his France Insoumise (LFI) movement won just 6.4 percent, while Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) came in first place nationally. Seeking answers to the Left’s malaise, Mediapart sat down with Elsa Faucillon, an MP for the French Communist Party (PCF) and Éric Coquerel, an MP for LFI. They discussed the reasons why old forms of mobilization aren’t engaging working-class France, their plans to reverse the advance of Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, and their thoughts on the rival left-unity projects that have emerged in recent years.
Fabien Escalona and Pauline Graulle
The European elections illustrated the Left’s difficulties in attracting the votes of the popular classes in any lasting and significant way. Did this owe to the nature of this contest itself, or were your respective parties somehow lacking in their bid to mobilize these popular layers?
Elsa Faucillon
Well, what you say is only half-right. There are two reasons for that. First, there were, indeed, sections of the popular classes who turned out in this election. But sadly, it was the RN who benefited the most. If this contest was framed in terms of opposition to the European Union as currently configured, or as a referendum on Macron, a part of the popular classes thought the RN was the answer. Then again, we should also note that 30 percent of the blue-collar electorate did vote for left-wing parties. The problem is that the Left was completely fragmented.
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