France’s Left Faces the 2027 Election Divided
The primary in France’s Parti Socialiste will not likely pick the winner of the 2027 presidential election. But it will decide whether the party seeks compromise on the Left, or else directs its fire against rival left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
French Communist Party General Secretary Fabien Roussel and La France Insoumise presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon shake hands as they take part in the politics show Élysée 2022 on March 31, 2022. (Thomas Coex / AFP via Getty Images)
Over Christmastime 2018, Jean-Luc Mélenchon met for lunch with Raphaël Glucksmann in France’s National Assembly.
Mélenchon was an MP at the time, fresh off his strong 2017 presidential run for France Insoumise. Glucksmann was a liberal essayist with a murky background advising sometimes-dubious politicians in countries like Ukraine and Georgia, producing documentaries about human rights issues while looking to get into politics himself.
The conversation stayed light and nonconfrontational, and they were joined by the former Socialist Emmanuel Maurel (at that time supportive of France Insoumise), and Thomas Porcher, an economist who’d voted for Mélenchon the year before. Porcher would go on to cofound Glucksmann’s new electoral outfit, called Place Publique, later that year. This new formation, Porcher told Le Monde at the time, was not founded to be “anti–Jean-Luc Mélenchon.”
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