🇫🇷 Socialists move to break away from Mélenchon
Arnault is suing Musk, Socialists negotiate support for Bayrou government, Mélenchon threatens the Parti Socialiste, Borne is back to work as education minister, and Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead
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This week
🧑⚖️Bernard Arnault is suing Elon Musk
🌹Socialists are negotiating support for Bayrou government
🤜Jean-Luc Mélenchon threatens the Parti Socialiste
📖Elisabeth Borne is back to work as education minister
🪦Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead
Happy New Year!
So, after a long-ish but much-needed break, we’re back!
With a Trump Presidency starting up in earnest and taking a chainsaw to American democracy, the European far-right licking it’s lips, and Hungary planning to sabotage any attempt to punish the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you can tell that this year is going to be a real doozy.
But, with the French government currently looking shockingly stable, the left pulling away from Jean-Luc Mélenchon and leaving him fuming, and with Emmanuel Macron, his party, and his potential successor, Gabriel Attal, all biding their time, things are slowly looking like France may have crossed its period of instability.
Regardless, enjoy this summary of the past weeks big stories, as well as the big news from this week, and look forward to some interesting news later.
🧑⚖️Bernard Arnault is suing Elon Musk

To start off with some big news from earlier this month: amongst the reactions that we have seen to Elon Musk’s assault on democracy, Europe’s richest individual, Bernard Arnault, is suing Elon Musk's social media platform X/Formerly Twitter, claiming his newspapers' content is being used without paying for it.
The newspapers in question are Le Parisien and Les Echos, two French dailies owned by Arnault's luxury empire LVMH, which includes brands such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Givenchy and have made him one of the richest men in the world.
Supported by heavyweights Le Figaro and Le Monde, the two biggest newspapers in France, the basis of this legal action is the claim that the newspapers are owed payment under a 2019 European directive which allows newspapers, magazines or press agencies to be remunerated when their content is reused by digital giants, according to the report.
The lawsuit comes two months after the Paris judicial court declared X had to provide commercial data to a group of French publishers, including Télérama, Courrier International, Le Huffington Post, and Le Nouvel Observateur.
This is because the newspapers claimed X “has not…complied” with this so far, “demonstrating its invariable desire to evade its legal obligations.”
Now, undoubtedly, many will celebrate any attempt to put Elon Musk back in his legal place, following his regular, unpleasant, and truth-free assaults on several countries across the world. But will it make much of a difference?
In this case, most likely not, as Elon Musk will be able to absorb any financial hit that this could throw at him, and in reality, will actually mostly serve just to drag his attention away from the UK and Keir Starmer and towards France.
Now, will this lead to him doing something incredibly silly that will lead to more legal actions against him? Most probably. Musk’s ego took a healthy boost when he helped to finance Donald Trump’s election victory, and he is carrying that through all of his work.
The problem for him is, however, that France is filled with people who love a good legal scrap and who enjoy international drama, which doesn’t bode well for the South African American-Imperialist (say that three times real fast).
Regardless, aside from Elon Musk inventing problems for everyone because he has no real direction in life, there are infinitely more important things happening right now in the world, like…
🌹Socialists are negotiating support for Bayrou government

…the whole of France not really having a budget or a tested government yet.
However, there are some good signs that this may be about to change. With Prime Minister Francois Bayrou giving his general policy speech on Tuesday 14 January, and the vote on the budget planned for the beginning on February, there have been intense negotiations between the major players for the past month.
However, the most interesting part of the story has been the members of the Nouveau Front Populaire, normally led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left La France Insoumise, negotiating intensely with the government on topics such as pension reforms, the 2025 budget, and ultimately the future of the French left.
Just without Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise.
The goals of these discussions, which include the Socialists, Ecologists and Communists, has been to primarily place pension reform back on the table, to push to lower the retirement to where it was previously, and to limit much of the social spending cuts that the government have been mulling over.
However, there’s a deeper political shift occurring on the French left, with many parties having finally had enough of the bullying La France Insoumise and their politicians have subjected to them, and these actors trying to rebuild some semblance of a left-wing that many of us remember.
Leading this effort has been the Parti Socialiste First Secretary, Olivier Faure, who has been (very) slowly taking a stronger position within the alliance, having seen off several challenges from the Insoumise and the centre-left actors within his coalition.
This is leading to an increased level of pragmatism: a major part of the negotiations has been a discussion on what the socialists can accept in place of a full repeal of the retirement reform, and one option put forward has been a six-month suspension, which would come alongside a negotiation between the parties, unions and employers.
Naturally, the far-left has been frothing at the mouth, with the President of the LFI Group in the Assemblée National immediately going on the offensive over on Twitter:
“Astonishing. The Socialist Party would therefore not only abandon the repeal of retirement at 64 but would even consider Bayrou's points-based retirement.
With the points-based retirement system, no one knows at what age and with how much they can retire. Retirement is a right, not a raffle!
Patrick Kanner , respect the NFP program and the social movement which caused this retirement to fail in 2020!”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, naturally, also waded into the situation, decrying the Socialists for betraying them and not telling them of their plans, ignoring the fact that Jean-Luc Mélenchon basically does what he wants and drags everyone behind him:
"In the simple vocabulary of political and trade union activists, saying 'move to another system' about pensions is the equivalent of a slap in the face … The Socialists' method is shocking because they did not warn any of us of their turn to the wing on this subject,"
While we’re already seeing some renewed criticism of the Socialists on social media from NFP militants, notably calling the Socialists right-wing for having the audacity to negotiate with the Macronists, they often ignore that the left does not have a majority on their own and that there is a need to negotiations.
This was the unfortunate result of the 2024 Legislative elections, with the Assemblée being evenly split between the left, the centre, and the far right, who also do what they can to extract their pound of flesh.
Having made the repeal of the pension reform a pillar of their electoral campaign, Rassemblement National President, Jordan Bardella, made it clear that it was not a priority, but that does not prevent them from playing the political game as they align themselves towards a more electable position for the potential legislative elections later this year.
Engaging in “negotiations”, most of the statements coming from Marine Le Pen’s troops highlight their confusion about what the government wants while levying accusations at the left of political Machiavellian around the topic.
All of this has led to the current situation where:
🤜Jean-Luc Mélenchon threatens the Parti Socialiste

The situation has now reached a stage where Jean-Luc Mélenchon is now openly threatening Olivier Faure’s PS, and is now effectively telling them, and pretty much only them, that they’re out of the coalition if they support, or even abstain from attacking Bayrou’s government.
“If Socialist deputies were to refuse again to censure François Bayrou's government [during the budget votes] they would definitively break with the Nouveau Front Populaire,” La France Insoumise announced following an inter-group meeting on 21 January, stating that this “would confirm a reversal of the alliance and would no longer be able to represent the left-wing opposition in their constituencies.”
With only the Parti Socialiste having the history, manpower, fundraising ability, and latent political power to challenge the current leadership of the NFP, you can understand why Jean-Luc Mélenchon is incredibly uneasy about Faure leading a breakway from “his political group”
Because essentially, having become a figure similar to Marine Le Pen who is exclusively focused on becoming President, Jean-Luc Mélenchon would find it impossible to achieve these goals if a left-wing union is not mostly behind him.
📖Elisabeth Borne is back to work as education minister

To round up the week, the newly nominated Minister of National Education, and former Prime Minister of the French Republic, Elisabeth Borne, have her first speech to trade unions this week, outlining her priorities and what will be abandoned.
Partially wrapped up in her rivalry with party leader, Gabriel Attal, Elisabeth Borne has switched tracked from previous ministry action, moving from “raising the level” of students” to focusing on inequality, showcasing her Socialist roots.
This was further reinforced by her push within the government to ensure a renouncement of the plan to cut 4,000 teaching positions, serving as an olive branch to the Parti Socialiste alongside the temporary suspension of plans to demand compulsory certificates to move up between schooling years.
However, while there are signs that Attal’s much-touted and opposed “clash of knowledge” programme is being further dismantled, it is currently being left in limbo, suspended while they re-evaluate the whole project and prevent the aggressive application of a difficult political project.
However, not everything is being suspended, with the new school curricula and the new forms of textbook structures being maintained, all while the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research completes a commissioned two-year study, with the first conclusions appearing in June.
🪦Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead

As you may have heard, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s dad, is dead as of 7 January 2025.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was a vain and nasty man who tried to help the man who attempted to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle, fostered the rise of the far-right, and gave a terrible image to our country.
He engaged in antisemitism, accusing Jacques Chirac of being paid by Jewish organisations, declared support for “the inequality of races”, engaged in wild xenophobia and holocaust revisionism, and even went as far as threatening Jewish singers with “doing a whole oven batch” that includes him.
He will not be missed by anyone of actual repute.
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Melanchon is a good example of what it means to be a left-wing populist and authoritarian. He has a history of promoting "democratic control" over capital but is not practicing real democracy in his party. The guy is also into conspiracy theories. The only positive thing I can remember is that he was once using a hologram for his campaigning, but that was positive in a technical sense only.