He wanted to reconnect with a “left without decibels but with solutions”. Former Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve wanted to open Saturday, June 10 “a path of hope”, seeming to take a step closer to a possible presidential candidacy in 2027.

The former interior minister once again denied any personal ambition to the press but, in the Créteil sports hall, his speech took on the accents of a candidate, to the delight of the activists.

The former mayor of Cherbourg left the Socialist Party (PS) after the Nupes agreement concluded more than a year ago with La France insoumise, Europe Ecologie les Verts, Communists and Socialists. With his movement La Convention, launched last March, he intends to federate leftist tendencies hostile to this alliance to prevent the arrival of the far right in power.

“It’s the life-changing governing left that you seek to revive,” he said in front of about 2,000 people, in the sweltering heat. And faced with “those who seem to fear” that he is a candidate, to launch: “when you have been a candidate 12 times in an election, nothing prevents you from being it a 13th time”.

While Olivier Faure, the boss of the PS, estimated during the week that this anti-Nupes left was a dead end, Bernard Cazeneuve retorted to see rather “a wide avenue, not to say a boulevard”.

He assured the room of his “will”, his “stubbornness” and his “determination” because “the nation longs for another path”. But “it is a matter that requires a lot of energy. It’s a bit like crossing the Himalayas without the mittens,” he admitted to the press a little later.

Very severe on the “strategy of confrontation” developed by La France insoumise for six years, he tackled: “no, sound and fury are not an option for the French”. He also criticized Olivier Faure: “I never thought that in PS, the S means sectarian”.

The entire anti-Mélenchon left had made an appointment for this first public meeting of his movement, which now has 7,000 members.

Towards a “political force”

Before a debate on Europe with in particular the former Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, the former President of the Italian Council Enrico Letta or the former President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, François Hollande justified his presence. The challenge is to be able to “reconstitute the great force of the left that the country needs” but “there is no victory on the left if it is not this force that is the first on the left”, has he asserted.

For the 2024 European elections, Bernard Cazeneuve pleaded, like the former head of state, for a “resolutely European” leftist list, which does not confuse dictators with representatives of the free world”.

In the audience, mostly made up of white heads, were the local representatives of La Convention, many socialist personalities such as the former first secretary of the PS Jean-Christophe Cambadélis or the former president of the National Assembly Claude Bartolone, but also representatives of the left of Macronie, such as Gilles Savary.

The representatives of the Refondations movement – ??the anti-Nupes line inside the PS – who are also trying to federate this left of government, were mostly on video. “Together, united, we are the left,” exclaimed Guillaume Lacroix, president of the Radical Left Party, which supports Bernard Cazeneuve’s initiative.

Social democracy, “it’s a movement in the making which is starting to become fashionable again”, greets Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, who also organized a rally in mid-May.

Bernard Cazeneuve says he is convinced that in the end, all these initiatives will come together. “We have to create the conditions for a broad base of the left in government so that there is political strength in the perspective of the upcoming deadlines,” he explained to Agence France-Presse. .