The prospect of the hard-left France Unbowed party taking control of Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city and home to Europe’s best-known airplane maker, is putting industry on edge.
It’s not just that a win in the second round of local elections Sunday could give the party’s anticapitalist leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a major boost ahead of next year’s presidential election. That’s a concern for later.
The immediate fear is that if France Unbowed makes history here — the party has never come close to controlling such a big metropolis — it will heap taxes on local icons like Airbus to pay for a generous manifesto that includes water subsidies, free public transport for residents under 26 years old, and free school meals and educational supplies.
Piquemal is characteristic of the new generation of radical left activists in France. He’s just as comfortable discussing toxic masculinity and making videos on TikTok as he is campaigning for rent controls or against Israel’s war in Gaza. He was aboard the so-called Freedom Flotilla with Greta Thunberg and MEP Rima Hassan, carrying aid to Gaza before they were all arrested by Israeli forces.
—-
sounds pretty far left to me
economically terrible policies (rent controls), appeals to social justice warrior (toxic masculinity, israel/gaza, gretel thumberg freedom flotila lol), posts on tiktok, wants to stop high speed rail because it might knock down a few trees (ignore all the co2 it will save getting people out of cars, climate change is last years left wing progressive trend)
what is far left to you? stalin?
Historians at least in France typically divide between left and far left as reformists and revolutionary. So they would be simple left. Just because the old school left parties now support right-wing policies should not make the whole political spectrum move to rhe right. Although right-wingers are playing this card right now in France, calling former leftists with neoliberal programs “left”, reformists “far left” and revolutionary “ultra left” (no joke) but this is outright manipulation and should precisely be avoided.
which position are they right on?
Do you mean what makes the French Socialist Party a right-wing one? Support for neoliberalism, for worse working conditions, opposition to more democratic alternatives, taking their distances from actions led by common people (anti-cops protests, yellow jackets movments and more recently the 10th of September Block Everything action), etc. They are like living dead, both left and right at the same time : left in the official categories and alliances, right in their political orientation. They’re clearly not hard right conservatives, but they clearly are capitalists supporters.
Ideologically, La France Insoumise is variously described as holding democratic socialist,[27][28] anti-neoliberal,[29]
Ignore this bit if you’re anti-ai:
It says the source is https://linsoumission.fr/2026/01/22/communes-insoumis-rev-citoyenne/ and wikipedia which says:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_France_Insoumise#Ideology_and_political_programme
So by your definition to be far left they have to be communist supporters?
Oh there seem to be some confusion here, my bad. My point was that PS (Socialist Party) is center-right, not LFI (which is left to my eyes and to most people excepting right wing fearmongers). I don’t know what you mean by communist supporters, if you mean people fighting for the worker’s rights outside of existing structures, then yes. If you mean leninist and derivatives, then not only : you’d have to include anarchists, libertarian marxists and close forms of revolutionary socialism.