This «manifesto» is signed by 400 personalities on the left, including almost all of the opponents of the pro-Nupes line of the boss of the PS Olivier Faure: the mayor of Le Mans Stéphane Le Foll, the former First Secretary of the PS Jean- Christophe Cambadélis or the leader of the minority current Hélène Geoffroy, mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin. But not the president of the Occitanie region Carole Delga or the former presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo.
Bernard Cazeneuve, who left the PS after the Nupes agreement, believes in this manifesto that «neither the anemic relative majority (of the macronists), nor the oppositions mainly driven by radicalism seem to be able to meet the expectations of our compatriots » .
«It would be wrong to be satisfied with the grandiloquent postures of insubordination, by accepting the marriage of inconsistency and violence, in a nihilism where anger would prevent the advent of hope», he adds.
In this context, «it is therefore up to us, republicans of the left and wherever we come from, to organize ourselves to gather our forces (…) in order to give back to the French people the hope to which they are entitled», writes Bernard Cazeneuve again.
The former head of government launches «a call for refoundation and therefore for the constitution of a collective dynamic».
In an interview with the JDD, he affirms that «if what we believe to be just attracts interest, a movement will be created, and we will make it a useful force to bring together as widely as possible all those who despair of the shrinkage of the left to its most sectarian fringes, now symbolized by the great International of the fight against barbecue».
And he tackles: «the left is under the domination of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the management of the PS has allowed itself to be petted».
Among the signatories of the manifesto are also several former socialist ministers (Christian Eckert, Frédéric Cuvillier, Jean Glavany, Michel Sapin or Catherine Trautmann), PS mayors, the president of the Brittany region Loïg Chesnais-Girard, «dissident» deputies from the Nupes, presidents of departments, and even members of the PRG, including its president Guillaume Lacroix.
For her part, Anne Hidalgo, who does not support the Nupes agreement because of her deep differences with LFI, considered that «the PS will no longer be what it was, will not be as before, but there is always a future and a history», during a speech at the back-to-school university of the socialist federation of Paris.
«This voice must not be hidden,» she said, explaining that she «never had shameful socialism». «I on the left learned it in the cradle, in what it brings when it transforms, not simply when it is in the incantation», she added.