French Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel has said he holds the La France Insoumise (LFI) party responsible for his demise during French legislative elections in the summer and was now actively distancing himself from the hard-left party.
On October 27, Roussel announced the creation of a new Communist-led hunting federation aimed at appealing to right-leaning rural voters.
Roussel expressed concern over what he said was the mistrust of Green Party leader Marine Tondelier in rural areas, fearing it could undermine the Communist Party’s traditional support there.
This new formation differs from the National Federation of hunters and could offend its leader Willy Schraen, who garnered some 2.5 per cent of the vote in the 2024 European elections.
Contacted by Brussels Signal the National Federation of hunters said they “have no comment to make at this stage on Fabien Roussel’s announcement”.
Left-wing alliance members, including LFI, have ridiculed the initiative.
“You won’t win with a steak!” said Green MP Sandrine Rousseau.
“Fabien Roussel always aims too far to the Right — the prey aren’t in danger,” mocked hard-left MP Louis Boyard on social media on October 28.
Le gibier ne risque rien, Fabien Roussel tire toujours trop à droite. https://t.co/cgk9P6IXMU
— Louis Boyard (@LouisBoyard) October 28, 2024
Roussel also announced that he would no longer be part of the left-wing alliance New Popular Front (NFP).
The Communist Party is currently in a national conference until December 4 to review the past legislative elections and decide whether or not to remain within the NFP.
“If I hadn’t made this alliance, I would have kept my job,” he said.
“If I were to run again, it wouldn’t be in an alliance with LFI,” he added on October 24.
Roussel lost his Nord 20 constituency in the election to the local National Rally (RN) candidate Guillaume Florquin. After months of silence, he is back in the limelight with a new political strategy.
“We got big scores in the big cities and small scores in the smaller towns and rural areas. I even think that in some places, the alliance pushed left-wing voters to vote RN,” Roussel said.
He said his desire now was to regain voters’ trust.
“How can we win back voters? I hear their disgust with politics, I sense a crisis,” he said.
He also targeted what he called the “identity battle” waged by LFI in working-class neighbourhoods and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, saying that the hard-left leader was “an open-sesame in the suburbs and a repellent in rural areas”.
Roussel’s sentiments echoed those of former LFI member François Ruffin who, in September, had also criticised the party’s political strategy, accusing them of racial profiling to gain votes and abandoning rural France for the French banlieue (city suburbs).
In his book Itinéraire. Ma France en entier, pas à moitié (Itinerary. My France in its entirety, not halfway) François Ruffin accused Mélenchon of abandoning the traditional working classes by targeting young people from immigrant backgrounds.
He has also accused LFI of conducting election campaigns based on race, prioritising discrimination issues over social ones. According to Ruffin, the party has abandoned the working-class electorate in favour of Muslims from the suburbs, for electoral reasons.
In an interview on French TV in September, Ruffin said: “There are two different campaigns: one campaign conducted in the neighbourhoods, which was quite different from the campaign conducted elsewhere.
“Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in a way, acknowledges this, since this Saturday, while marching in the protest, he spoke to a protester and said these words: ‘We need to mobilise the youth and the neighbourhoods; that’s where the majority of people interested in left-wing policies can be found. The rest we can let go,'” Ruffin said, referring to Melenchon’s campaigning on September 7.
