Olivier Faure firmly defended, during the National Council of the Socialist Party, the choice to join the New People’s Ecological and Social Union. “To follow the elephants, we could have gone to the cemetery” mocked the first secretary of the PS. “I heard everything, I also endured everything. With you, I won this crazy bet to do more with less, ”he declared before the PS parliament, in Ivry-sur-Seine, at the gates of Paris.
He recalled that with candidates in just over 70 legislative constituencies, according to the Nupes agreement with LFI, EELV, the PCF and Générations, the PS won “nearly 300,000 additional votes compared to presidential”. The socialist group in the assembly “will be made up of more than thirty deputies”, against 27 in the previous mandate, indicated Pierre Jouvet, national secretary, affirming that “without the rally, we would not have been able to return to the Assembly with more than 5 or 6 deputies”, in view of the result of the presidential election, where the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo had obtained 1.7% of the votes.
“Yes, we did well to make this agreement,” insisted Olivier Faure, assuring that without Nupes, “the far right would have found itself in 200 additional constituencies in the second round”. While 59 dissident socialist candidates ran against the Nupes agreement, according to PS figures, “the dissident strategy lost in front of the voters” and “our rules (of exclusion, editor’s note) will apply”, affirmed the first secretary.
Great Membership Campaign
“It’s true the left did not win in 2022 but it has progressed spectacularly, by the number and above all the state of mind that reigns between us and our partners” from Nupes, he insisted, while acknowledging that we should “question ourselves with our partners on the reasons for the failure”. In addition to the summer universities in Blois on August 26, 27 and 28, a PS congress will take place in the fall, he said, insisting: “we do not turn our backs on those who trusted us “.
Among the speakers, a majority welcomed the strategy of the first secretary, “something of a clairvoyance”, underlined the new president of the socialist group in the Assembly Boris Vallaud. Hélène Geoffroy, leader of the minority current opposed to the agreement, regretted the “triumphalism” of the party leadership, emphasizing that the left had “not found the way to working-class neighborhoods”, and asserting that “the radicalism of the France insoumise” had prevented the Nupes candidates from winning enough duels on the left.
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Olivier Faure has also announced that a major PS membership campaign will begin next week.