[sorry for the mistakes, typos etc. in the above post, I typed too fast and I was cream-crackered!]
Interestingly, there will be a Union de la Gauche list in the 1st round of the forthcoming regional elections in June. It is a very rare occurrence though and I’d be amazed if it was done nationally next year for the Presidentials.
The Green MEP Karima Delli will head it and run against En Marche, the Rassemblement National (quite popular up there, Marine Le Pen is a local MP) and Xavier Bertrand, the current president of the region (and as of today the only declared presidential candidate for the right, the Les Républicains party) whom I actually met several times in the mid-1990s when he was in the Saint-Quentin municipal team in Picardie (Aisne department, Hauts-de-France) and I was running a Work Experience scheme to Saint-Quentin for 6th formers for my comprehensive school near Sheffield and about 8 other schools for the Rotherham LEA.
The St-Quentin mayor back then was a bit of a twunt (although the kids and staff were all given lovely presents every year, watches with the St-Quentin logo etc.) but Xavier Bertrand, in charge then of the “redynamisation” of Saint-Quentin IIRC, youth services and suchlike, was pleasant to deal with. He certainly helped us with setting up and running that complex work experience scheme, which I believe was unique in England (I can’t unfortunately take the credit for creating it! I didn’t do the initial set-up legwork, it was created before I worked in a school located in that Rotherham LEA but it grew and evolved and by 1995 I’d managed to involve about sixty 16-18 year olds and many local employers of all sorts - bars, restaurants, admins, shops, municipal services, sports & leisure departments etc., so help from the St-Quentin municipality was vital in this respect, it represented a lot of work with at times legal complications, paperwork and his help was invaluable, with finding employers happy to receive our teenagers, risk assessment, health & safety etc. No internet in those days - or that dreadful dial-up thing…- so I used to call Bertrand a lot at some point, he was always very helpful and keen to develop this international scheme).
He did a lot for youths in that large town in the summer, he inter alia created artificial beaches in several places in the town (the main one, slap bang in the city centre, was fabulous, I think it was the first city centre beach in France, way before Paris etc.) with lots of daily activities and workshops, volley-ball/pétanque/table tennis tournaments etc. so the local kids wouldn’t get bored during the summer hols. We managed to keep the costs down (a number of our kids weren’t from well-off backgrounds) thanks to the Mairie letting us use the local Youth Hostel for free for a fortnight but all of a sudden the mayor changed his mind and circa 1998 wanted to charge us, fair enough but most of our Rotherham kids couldn’t fork out £600 (as opposed to the ~£300 it was up to then), so that was a no-no and I moved the operations to Blois (of which the inénarrable Jack Lang was the mayor!) where we were welcomed with open arms (a great local teacher found us 40-odd host families, the municipality helped us set it up etc.).
A success in these regionals is vital to bolster Xavier Bertrand’s presidential ambitions and credentials. Should Bertrand lose that one, it’s likely that he’d either have to pull out of the presidential race altogether or would have little chance of winning the Les Républicains primaries next autumn. He is not a terribly popular candidate anyway and it’s likely that Édouard Philippe would beat him in a primary should the latter decide to go for it.
[Régionales 2021 : après les Hauts-de-France, l’union de la gauche peut-elle se généraliser ?
DÉCRYPTAGE - La liste d’union de la gauche annoncée pour les régionales dans les Hauts-de-France a été accueillie chaleureusement par la gauche. Mais va-t-elle se concrétiser en Île-de-France et en Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ?
L’union de la gauche saluée dans les Hauts-de-France. La députée européenne Karima Delli a annoncé qu’elle sera à la tête d’une liste composée par EELV, le Parti socialiste, la France insoumise et le PCF.
Une décision qui fait office d’exemple tant pour les régionales que pour la présidentielle où le risque d’un embouteillage des candidatures à gauche est à craindre. L’annonce a même donné des ailes au premier secrétaire du Parti socialiste Olivier Faure qui a lancé un appel à multiplier les démarches d’unions et d’alliance.
Mais le secrétaire national du PCF Fabien Roussel ne se fait guère d’illusions et juge peu probable que l’union soit reproduite en dehors de la région des Hauts-de-France. Féliciter la démarche portée par Karima Delli est une chose mais l’incarner à son tour, en est une autre.](Régionales 2021 : après les Hauts-de-France, l'union de la gauche peut-elle se généraliser ?)