2023-06-10 20:13:25
In Creteil,
“A glorious past, an ambitious future”: the slogan of US Créteil Handball at the entrance to the city’s sports hall finally summed up the objectives of this first major meeting of La Convention, this Saturday. The Convention? “Less than a party but more than a club” created by Bernard Cazeneuve to bring together the social democrats lonely by the creation of the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes)outside but also inside a PS described as subject to the diktat of the rebellious.
All the opponents of Nupes on the left were in the room (former President François Hollande, the mayor of Montpellier Michael Delafossethe former boss of the PS Jean-Christophe Cambadelis…) or on video (the president of Occitanie Carole Delgathe mayors of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and Le Mans Stéphane Le Foll…). In front of them, Bernard Cazeneuve delivered a long speech, of which it was not always clear whether its magnitude made it a founding speech or, downright, of candidacy. “When you have been a candidate twelve times, nothing prevents you from being a candidate for the thirteenth time,” said the former Prime Minister. He assures her: “You can count on my determination in everything. »
“A man with a sense of power”
Bernard Cazeneuve also gave a more personal turn to his speech, speaking of his Pied-noir parents, of his childhood in Nîmes and of what “school of the Republic” in Creil brought him. He may well deny, assure that “the question of a candidacy does not arise until there is a political force” around him, the former Prime Minister was not at the podium like the simple moderator of a great debate of the social democratic left. The introduction of the leader of the Radical Left Party (PRG), Guillaume Lacroix, main ally of the former deputy and mayor of Cherbourg, was there to avoid any ambiguity, by describing the portrait of a candidate in his eyes credible to the Elysée: “A man who has a sense of power and the gravity of the moment. »
If we want to believe that with this objective Bernard Cazeneuve wants to “bring the French together”, we could wonder if they could find themselves there on the merits. The afternoon, like the almost daily activity of the anti-Nupes left, was largely devoted to countless attempts to define the word “left”. Here she was sometimes reformist, social democrat, secular, republican, who “loves France”, of course “of government”, who “changes life”. An exercise to which had already been widely lent Anne Hidalgo last year in his presidential campaign, with the success that we know.
old references
On the form, all and all, Cazeneuve no less than the others, have drawn by small more or less subtle touches all that should not be done for the left to return to power: in short, Mélenchon. Never cited, on the other hand, we no longer count the references to the “noise” and the “fury” of the rebellious leader, the criticisms against the “strategy of conflictuality”.
Of course, the RN is his “only adversary”, but most of the time when he broaches the subject of the far right, it is to hit the Nupes. Bernard Cazeneuve finally briefly and late in the speech attacked the injustice of the president’s policy, but also applauded some of his measures, such as the splitting of CP classes. “They were elected like the left of Michel Rocard, they governed like the right of Guizot”, denounced Bernard Cazeneuve, not stingy with very very old references. The former Prime Minister referred countless times to Mitterrand, to Mendès France too.
Advantage Cazeneuve in the anti-Nupes left
“There will be other references in other speeches”, escapes Cazeneuve when asked if these are the adequate references to France in 2023. If they deny it, what marks it the most is the nostalgia that reigns among the speakers and the public. The afternoon also began with a short, highly acclaimed film on the great hours of the left from the creation of the PS in 1905 until the victory of Francois Hollande in 2012. Bernard Cazeneuve even introduced his speech by welcoming the presence of the widow of Michel Rocard and the family of Pierre Bérégovoy. The nostalgia even goes as far as aesthetic references: the little clip of La Convention looks like it could be mistaken to François Mitterrand’s mythical campaign clip in 1988.
In the friendly of the anti-Nupes left, Bernard Cazeneuve undoubtedly emerges strengthened after having brought together at least 2,000 people. One even wonders if his guests and “friends”, who for some and some also have some presidential ambitions, have not been presented with the fait accompli of a quasi-candidate speech. Beyond these circles, we will be careful not to say whether Bernard Cazeneuve has “a boulevard”, as he says, but this success allows the former Prime Minister to at least justify the existence of La Convention. The problem is that the many “orphans of the left of government” who were in Créteil this Saturday looked more like the grandfathers and grandmothers of this left than the vanguard of the revival of social democracy.
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