France Insoumise, created in January 2016 to serve as a vehicle for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s presidential campaign, is today a force with seventy-one members of the National Assembly and annual public funding of some €5 million. Its results in presidential and parliamentary elections, like its strong performance in the last such vote in July, are unmatched by its scores in European or local contests. Yet, this movement has established itself as the center of gravity for the French left, over the course of many years.
In 2017, Mélenchon won the highest tally for a candidate to the left of the Parti Socialiste in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2022, he added on another seven hundred thousand votes, reaching 22 percent support. True: this wasn’t enough to win the presidency or even reach the run-off against Emmanuel Macron. Still, while after the upturn in 2015–19, most radical left-wing forces around Europe are in retreat (Podemos, Syriza, Jeremy Corbyn, Bloco de Esquerda, etc.), France Insoumise just keeps going — like what Mélenchon calls a “shrewd tortoise.”
Despite frequent predictions of Mélenchon’s political death, this never really turns out in practice. In last month’s parliamentary elections, pollsters and the media all predicted victory for the far-right Rassemblement National. Yet the left-wing coalition, led by France Insoumise, won the biggest number of seats. This was surely a relative victory: the Left’s Nouveau Front Populaire has 178 seats, compared with 162 for Emmanuel Macron’s camp and 142 for the Rassemblement National. But it again testifies to Mélenchon’s longevity. So, what assessment can we draw, after eight years of France Insoumise?
Based on a long-term survey of France Insoumise…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Manuel Cervera-Marzal
