France: ex-chief editor founds left-wing movement
With the appeal "Let's get involved!" Laurent Joffrin, former editor-in-chief of the left-liberal daily Liberation, has launched a "social, ecological and republican" movement. Hoping to unite France's left ahead of the presidential election in 2022, Joffrin aims to provide an alternative to the Macron-Le Pen duel. But his fellow journalists are less than convinced by the initiative.
Something for everyone
The appeal lacks definition, writes Nicolas Beytout, founder of the liberal daily L'Opinion, in an editorial directed at Joffrin:
“As I'm sure you already suspected (and you'll get over it), I will not sign your call for the creation of a movement 'which both encompasses and goes beyond the formations of the historic left'. ... I don't think that the emergence of yet another movement is what the divided left needs most today. Especially since I find your founding text, 'Engageons-nous' a little too catch-all to be convincing. We can detect all the canons of good thinking, all the figures of speech of those who want to reach out to a broad electorate, but nothing resounding, nothing that (at this stage) makes that difference.”
A gravedigger à la Hollande
Joffrin is anything but a salvation for the left, Mediapart seethes:
“Laurent Joffrin is for journalism what François Hollande is for the left: a betrayal of every hope, however reasonable, of questioning ordo-liberalism. ... The gravediggers are back. They have liquidated the left, their press, and their ruling party for more than 20 years. One scared the readers, the other the voters. They are over 60 and white, and instead of retiring they are brazenly trying to regain power. A comeback that is supposed to succeed with a new approach based solely on voting effectively against Le Pen, and which comes across as an 'anti-Macron' discourse. ... Didn't Hollande win in 2012 by embodying 'anti-Sarkozy' sentiment?”