Also, it seems much of the struggle is straight about personalities, alliances, rather than anything really resembling political stances. For example, Royal getting Guerini's support is very important, not because Guerini would be anything like a heavyweight, but because the Bouches-du-Rhône PS section is one of the largest in France, carrying a lot of votes - many of which barely legitimate. The number of adhesion card given by the PS is rising fast, and not necessarily corresponding to an actual rise in live members : apparently the PS elections suffer a fair amount of manipulation. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
And what's your take on Besancenot? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The first question being, is Besancenot an actual leader of the far left or just the mouthpiece of Krivine, the real boss of LCR since '68 ? (the situation in Laguiller's LO was similar, with Hardy the actual leader of that party).
Secondly, the far left has been in disarray, with the PCF getting closer to irrelevancy with each election season ; the more libertarian and ecologists elements, the "altermondialists", gravitating towards Jose Bove ; and LCR and Besancenot displacing Laguiller for the "popular far left vote".
Right now, it seems Bove is uniting with the Greens and "apolitical ecologist" Nicolas Hulot for the EP elections, thus leaving the far left political ground wide open for LCR. With European Elections, with their proportional representation and relative National irrelevance, usually marking the high tide of small parties, LCR could poll fairly high - it'll be interesting to see how much.
Besancenot may be the only real opposition voice heard regularly in the media, but I don't see LCR starting the kind of ground work necessary to create class consciousness - like what the PCF was doing in the '50s and '60s. So I'm not sure their popularity can translate to much more than the traditional - and more and more ineffective, with the current right wing media we're having - support for some more demonstration and strikes ; I don't see them helping give weight to the worker's side in the national balance of power.
As LCR is right now refusing any eventuality of government participation, there's also the danger they'd install themselves in the very comfortable position of an ineffectual, but long lasting, far left systematic opposition, which would even be worse. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
