and especially for the french speakers amongst you: the very first paragraph. In my view, the press release does not need this paragraph, in fact taken out, the release, on the rest on the content, is clearer. So, the fact that the release includes it, indeed headlines with it, is telling us something.

And in my opinion, it is to open up; the folks looking for representation, and who are flocking today in droves to BBM, don't give a shit if you call yourself left or right. They just want representation.

And they are not getting it.

I'd also add that M'PEP doesn't even address EELV, and this is pretty much by design, as it is a European and not a French party. My own view, is that EELV occupies the same practical/ideological space as the PCF in the PS electoral strategy: EELV provides the environmental bona fides, PCF the "red" bona fides, to allow the PS to rake in the votes from people with one or the other (or both) sensibilities.

The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill

M'PEP keeps such a low profile that if you ask google about it you get links about Pep Guardiola.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

Labour's rebirth requires a grassroots revolution, not more diktats and spin | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

Leadership comes from below: that's what most successful progressive parties have in common. Leftwing parties have triumphed where politics has been reshaped by powerful social movements, and failed where they rely on passive support. The late 20th-century model - of speeches, spin and central diktats - is a dud.

No progressive party can survive the corporate press, corrupt party funding systems and conservative fear machines by fighting these forces on their own terms. The left can build only from the ground up, reshaping itself through the revitalisation of communities, working with local people to help fill the gaps in social provision left by an uncaring elite. A successful progressive movement must now be Citizens Advice bureau, housing association, scout troop, trade union, credit union, bingo hall, food bank, careworker, football club and evangelical church, rolled into one. Focus groups and spin doctors no longer deliver.

This is the lesson from Latin America, where many of the progressive victories of the past 20 years have been won. They arose not from short-term electoral strategies, let alone from friendly overtures to media barons and banks, but from citizens' movements that began, in some cases, 50 years ago. These movements have had plenty of setbacks and disappointments. But they have locked in change of the kind that once seemed impossible.

Nothing in this text to quarrel about. But given that I know next to nothing about M'PEP it tells me little except that the Vichy left keeps disintegrating. Will this amount to anything? They don't even have an English Wiki page.

It s pretty sad that the only alternative to the FN is this ;-)

And as Marine Lepen often pointed out, it defeats the purpose to encourage immigration / free movement of people in Europe ( which both are encouraged by large businesses/governments to pressure blue collar's salary) while at the same time claiming protecting these blue collar/population from this race to the bottom.

It s not going to be pretty in France, democracy is dying fast there, a huge clean up is to be expected.

Cécile Duflot replies to Jean-Luc Mélenchon:

L'Allemagne n'est pas notre ennemie - Libération		Germany is not our enemy - Libération
Tu es un animal politique trop doué et un intellectuel trop avisé pour que je ne me dise pas que le ton employé relève d'une stratégie de conquête des coeurs. En mettant ta critique de l'Allemagne au diapason de la nostalgie identitaire, tu penses, peut-être de bonne foi, détourner la colère populaire des sirènes national-populistes. Il n'en sera rien. Mettre le doigt dans cet engrenage sémantique, c'est se préparer à avoir bientôt tout le corps entraîné dans la germanophobie la plus élémentaire. Tu te défends de cette critique en renvoyant, par avance, tous ceux qui seraient choqués par tes propos dans le camp des tenants du système.		You're a way too skilled political animal and such a well advised intellectual that I can't help thinking that the tone employed is akin to a strategy of "conquest of the hearts". By putting your criticism of Germany in tune with identity nostalgia, you think, maybe in good faith, to turn the popular anger from the sirens of National-populism. It won't happen. Putting a finger in this semantics spiral, is looking at having soon your whole body dragged into the most primary Germanophobia. You are fending this criticism off, by referring, in advance, all those who would be shocked by your words to the camp of the system proponents.

Mélenchon recently published a pamphlet, Le hareng de Bismarck (Bismarck's herring), a virulent critique of Germany.