Olivier Faure affirms that the socialists "are willing" to succeed François Bayrou

The First Secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, asked Emmanuel Macron on Friday, August 29, to appoint a Prime Minister from the left, in the event of the fall of François Bayrou's government on September 8.

"We are volunteers to be next!" he declared at his party's summer university in Blois (Loir-et-Cher). Advocating "another way of governing," he made "a commitment not to use Article 49.3, which will automatically force us to find compromises text by text."

"We are not just proposing an alternative plan to François Bayrou's, we are proposing another way of governing," he insisted, as the Socialist Party is due to present its budget proposals on Saturday, which will prioritize "investment and tax justice," he explained, in front of several hundred activists and representatives of the Ecologists, the PCF, the ex-Insoumis, Place publique, and Générations.

He claims that the left will prove "that it is possible to reduce the country's debt without sinking the working and middle classes," and "that reducing debt cannot mean stifling activity."

"The left is coming back," cried the first secretary of the Socialist Party, who seemed to be positioning himself for the post of Prime Minister.

He said he wanted to "put an end to this Thatcherite fable of 'Bayrou or chaos'." "It's not Bayrou or the apocalypse, from tomorrow it will be his project or ours," he insisted.

"You are the debt! You are the irresponsible! You are the engineers of chaos!" he denounced to François Bayrou and the presidential camp.

Faced with the hypothesis of a "Faure-Retailleau government," raised by Minister François Rebsamen, Olivier Faure said he had "a sense of humor but not one for betraying one's convictions." "I'm not made of that metal," he added.

On several occasions, he insisted on the unity of the left: "The time has come to reawaken hope. We will do this with the political parties and civil society organizations that seek justice, not chaos," he explained, seeming to exclude La France Insoumise from this arc.

A little earlier, during a joint meeting of the left with Lucie Castets, the short-lived candidate in 2024 of the New Popular Front for Matignon, the head of the Ecologists Marine Tondelier , the deputy François Ruffin, and several other left-wing leaders, had however pleaded for a broad union of the left with LFI.