One should always listen to Stéphane Le Foll. The mayor of le Mans, formerly the director of cabinet of François Hollande, the PS, was the wrong sometimes speak with a bit of roughness, but his remarks are often fly. And in 2017, while Olivier Faure, the new boss of Solferino – a position removed to the beard of The Foll… –, comes to announce the relocation of the beautiful districts of Paris to a street, sad to Ivry-sur-Seine, Le Foll, probably a little bitter, fact of the The Foll. He quips, ” these spoilt children who have known only victories and lose the head at the first defeat, to the point of selling the historic headquarters of the party and considering moving districts to be able to a suburb where nobody will go. Bullshit. While they are there, they just have to settle in Ardèche “.
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Val-de-Marne will be selected, not the Ardèche, but The Foll had a little reason. The new headquarters of the PS, yet not so far away from the RER, does not attract many people. “The great elected officials, journalists, personalities, they are not many to come, and the national office sounds hollow “, note a tenor socialist. The anti-Ivry fun to relate this sentence of Julien Dray, arriving for the first time at the new headquarters : “Even my GPS has not found ! “Another, even more nasty, critical at the time as” a choice made by those who have a car with driver “.
“Here, we are walk-in life”
The disaffection for the place, without doubt, combined with the dislike for the fist and the rose, she leads Olivier Faure to consider a return in Paris ? This is the theory of a number of senior socialists. In 2018, the suburbs seemed to fill the SP leadership. “At Solferino, it was a prestigious building. Here, we are a walk-in in life, including with the people we want to represent, ” explained Olivier Faure. The inauguration of the old factory, in January, it added a layer : “We have made the choice to reinstate a neighborhood that is closest to what we wear, and those for whom we fight. “Understand : the passage of the device, it is the return to the roots of the socialist, the working class, the popular classes, etc
By installing in the premises belonging to the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, the PS could return with other roots, those of geography. It is in fact there, Cité Malesherbes, that the SFIO takes up its quarters in 1938. The Fondation Jean Jaurès, the owner of the place, looking for premises to move its archives, which are overflowing (the place is only 450 square meters). It would settle so its more than 300 researchers and their work at Ivry, in the 1 500 square meters from the current headquarters of the party, the latter replacing the researchers. But the operation does not take the form of an exchange between the PS and the Fondation Jean Jaurès. “Impossible legally “, explains Olivier Faure.
A party, well, at least financially
The purchase of the premises would not be a problem for the PS. By reselling the particular hotel of the rue de Solferino, by the end of 2017, the party has pocketed $ 45.5 million euros. He has spent five to acquire the former manufacture d’ivry, plus another four million to renovate the place. The party of François Mitterrand is so good, at least financially. “It is one of the only political formations, with LREM, to be able to finance a presidential campaign without a problem,” says a hierarch socialist.
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If the state of the finances does not justify the desire, moreover, the containment is passed through there. The permanent (they are over fifty) are, as everywhere, to telecommute, which requires less space. A place less extensive, such as the Cité Malesherbes, would be appropriate, therefore, to this new way of working. At the party, some suspect, however the management want to go further, by aiding in the removal of a reduction of staff. As in a company lambda, the additional tasks, such as accounting, could be outsourced. The party would be reduced to its simplest expression, a nerve-centre to prepare for the fighting election, “in the manner of the us democratic party,” observes a good connoisseur of the PS.
Olivier Faure denies this scenario. “Even the Cité Malesherbes is only a hypothesis. There is an opportunity […], but it is far from being concluded. It is necessary a detailed study, legal and financial, ” says the first secretary. That will also have to prepare its arguments to explain that, after having extolled the charms popular in the suburbs, he would leave.
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Sébastien Le Fol – The French policy is in need of a blow of the whip Faure, ready to support an environmentalist for the presidential election of 2022
