Lucie Castets, François Ruffin, Marine Tondelier, Clémentine Autain, Olivier Faure… Gathered this weekend in Tours, the personalities forming the “Front Populaire 2027” announced the date of a primary aimed at designating a left-wing candidacy capable of reaching the second round of the 2027 presidential election. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Raphaël Glucksmann maintain their refusal to participate.
“We do not have the right to fail to offer a perspective to the working classes, to the people of the left”, defends Clémentine Autain. This Saturday, January 24, in Tours, the MP from the Ecologist and Social group gave a press conference with her comrades of the “Front Populaire 2027” to announce the holding, on October 11, 2026, of a primary aimed at investing a common left candidacy in the presidential election scheduled for 2027.
The move is the one pursued by non-Melenchonist left-wing figures who intend to perpetuate the unitary spirit that allowed, following the surprise dissolution of the National Assembly by Emmanuel Macron in 2024, the Nouveau Front populaire (NFP) to achieve an unlikely score in the legislative elections. This Front Populaire 2027 is led by Marine Tondelier, the head of the Ecologists, the deputies François Ruffin (with his movement Debout!) and Clémentine Autain (with her movement L’Après), as well as the candidate for Matignon designated in 2024 by the NFP, Lucie Castets. On July 2 last in Bagneux (Hauts-de-Seine), the alliance – in which Génération.s, Benoît Hamon’s movement, also participates – swore to present at the next presidential election a “common candidate” capable of reaching the second round.
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As with the presidential election, every candidate for this primary will have to gather 500 endorsements from mayors, knowing that these mayors can endorse two or three candidates. This means “there will not be a sham candidacy from people who could come forward without the support that would allow them, at the end of this primary, to become a candidate in the presidential election”, underscored Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS). The objective announced: two million voters, with a physical vote in all cantons of France and, possibly, a digital vote.
Without Glucksmann but with the PS?
Having a clear aim to offer a path to the left-leaning electorate that does not want to be represented by Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the second round of the presidential election, this left-wing primary does not have the support of Raphaël Glucksmann: “I won’t be there, I will not change my mind about it”, confirmed this Monday on BFMTV-RMC the MEP already running for 2027 to lead his Place publique movement. “This primary is a desire not to choose between the two poles that exist on the left, between, on one side Jean-Luc Mélenchon, populism, the brutalization of the public debate, the rejection of the European Union and on the other, a social-democratic left that is committed to governing the country, which is viscerally pro-European”, he argued, adding: “It’s the assertion of these two poles that will trigger dynamics at the time of the elections.” And to propose, in place, “to his Socialist partners to work on a common platform that would then trigger an electoral dynamic” for 2027.
Big unknown at this stage: the participation of the PS, internally divided. Thus, Olivier Faure did not have “a mandate” in Tours to “condone the announcements”, clarified the head of the socialist senators, Patrick Kanner. The camp of the leader of the socialist deputies, Boris Vallaud, a hinge to shape or break a majority within the party, considers that in the absence of Raphaël Glucksmann in the framework, this primary is “a ragbag”, according to AFP. The same demand that the PS designate in advance its own candidate, without concealing Boris Vallaud’s ambition. Other voices, including a certain François Hollande, lean toward a federation of the reformist left ranging from the PS to Raphaël Glucksmann, Bernard Cazeneuve, and Yannick Jadot, which would designate a consensus candidate. “The proof that the primary makes no sense is precisely what is happening in the Assembly, where Ecologists, Autain and Ruffin voted to censure LFI and against the budget, risking toppling the government when the Socialists were seeking an exit”, argues François Hollande, whose name is circulating again for 2027. The Communist Party (PCF) of Fabien Roussel is not part of the venture either, even if the PS and Ecologists are convinced that it will join in sooner or later.
“We have divergences, we have differences. Simply, we believe that the moment is such that what we have in common is infinitely greater than what divides us”, argues Clémentine Autain. “All the people who claim they can qualify for the second round on their own are lying to you, lying to themselves and lying to their voters”, echoes Marine Tondelier. And François Ruffin warns his comrades opposed to a common left primary: “When the train has started, those who stay on the platform will look very stupid.” Stating that he would continue to fight within his ranks “so that this primary takes place”, the first secretary of the PS recalled that the idea would be submitted after the municipal elections to a vote by Socialist militants. In the meantime, the left’s division delights the National Rally, at the head of all polls one year before the presidential election…
