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The French writer and journalist Astrid de Villaines presents her latest book ‘Les sept péchés capitaux de la gauche’ (The Seven Deadly Sins of the Left) published by the JCLattès publishing house. An analysis of the chaotic trajectory of this historic party of the last 20 years, from the resounding elimination of the first round of Lionel Jospin in 2022 to the pyrrhic 1.75% of the votes obtained by Anne Hidalgo.
“Imagine for a second, Mr. Candidate, that you do not go to the second round, who would you vote for?” This is the question that a journalist asked in 2002 the socialist Lionel Jospin, prime minister and presidential candidate on the eve of the elections. Jospin responded with a laugh and on election day he was left out of the second round to which the right-wing Jacques Chirac and the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen passed. It was the first time that a candidate from the extreme right had gone to the second round, a surprise for many French people, who, like Jospin, were not expecting it.
We could say that this is one of the deadly sins, a kind of founding sin of the French left, according to the journalist Astrid de Vilaines, who has covered the political campaigns of François Hollande, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Emmanuel Macron and Emmanuel Macron for different media. of all the left-wing parties from 2011 to 2022.
“At that moment, Jospin was arrogant. At that moment there were eight left-wing candidates and it never crossed his mind that the extreme right could go to the second round. In reality, nobody thought about it. However, in 2022 in the last presidential elections, the same thing happened: the left was left out and the extreme right passed. This 20-year period is very interesting for me,” explains the author of the book in which she analyzes the errors through the seven sins capitals established by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
In his book, he emphasizes the attacks in Paris in 2015 and how they influenced the electoral decline of the PS, then in the Government with François Hollande. “From that moment the voters no longer wanted to vote for them, it can be seen in the polls, there is much more support for the right and the extreme right. Hollande handled the situation in such a way that the country was not divided at the time. But they did not want to analyze Many councilors and members of the Socialist Party said that the causes of the attacks did not have to be explained, but there is a lot to explain, for example, what happens in the suburbs, in schools, those who became radicalized… and there they lost credibility “, says the journalist.
“I don’t think the left has betrayed its values, but it has forgotten them. The popular categories, like the workers, no longer vote for the Socialist Party. Neither do the people from the countryside. And that is a bigger problem for them. They have I have to go talk to them. But they are disconnected. For me, that’s laziness”, analyzes Astrid de Villaines.
In the last French elections, the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo obtained a pyrrhic 1.75% of the vote. “We are before the original sin that is the lie”, explains the author of the book. “She, who is the mayor of Paris, told the Parisians that she was not going to run in the presidential elections and she ran,” she concludes.
In the example of the sin of wrath, Astrid de Villaines names the candidate of the Unsubdued France, Jean-Luc Mélénchon. And it is that all the French have in mind when they saw Mélenchon live shouting “The Republic is me” at the door of the premises of his party where the police are carrying out a search.
“He’s not lazy at all, but he represents anger, that took its toll on him. I think that’s why he didn’t make it to the second round,” says our guest at Escala in Paris.
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