Left parties are going through a rough ride in many EU countries – but France is the sad example of how bad it can get. There is no difference between the three main left candidates, and on the top, they are already fighting badly.
When several detergents look the same, marketing tries to present them differently. That is what is happening inside the French left: a weird marketing campaign that hasn’t much to do with politics.
Macron has managed to divide the Socialists. He has convinced a few politicians from the PS to follow him. After his election in 2017, Benoît Hamon created a new party called Génération, with the most leftist part of the organisation. They are launching their campaign with Yannis Varoufakis.
Hamon argues the EU should insist on social and environmental issues, by printing more money and investing more, and putting a brake on trade agreements and liberal measures.
That is exactly what the actual Socialist party, who has teamed up with a new organisation called Place Publique for the European elections, defends. That is also what the French socialist delegation has been fighting for at the European Parliament during the last 5 years.
That is also very close to what the Greens, Europe Écologie – Les Verts (EELV), have chosen as main political themes.
Exactly the same political line
So let’s go to the point : they all have the same political line.
But before the campaign has even started in France, they already fight badly. Yannick Jadot, from the Greens, and Guillaume Balas, from Generation, have already accused the socialists of not being green enough, because of a vote on glyphosate at the European Parliament.
It’s a complicated issue, way too complicated for most voters : Socialists have investigated the glyphosate case at the EP, but have not voted part of a report on the subject.
Differences are non-existent, so politicians try to create some.
But voters are not supermarket consumers. They might realise quickly that they are being fooled.
Left parties are slowly killing each other
When everything looks the same, you have two choices: chose randomly, by closing your eyes; or pass your way because the decision is just impossible to make.
Both solutions are dangerous for the left. Greens should get a few seats at the EP anyway, but much less than in Germany for example where a real “green wave” seems to be coming. Socialists have a 40% chance not getting any seat at the moment, and Génération has no chance at all of getting any.
The different forces at the left are slowly killing each other, though they could have a say, especially as a lot of voters are deluded with Macron, who is conducting a right-wing government in France.
“The voters are orphans in the end” a socialist argue.
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And there, with your own words, is the complete problem of the Left. “Glyphosate is too complicated for most voters”. The left cannot help but think it knows better than everyone else, it is its basic nature.