“I’m not asking for anything, but it’s time for commitment and that suits me.” In an interview with AFP this Thursday, Laurence Tubiana, proposed by the socialists, communists and environmentalists as the candidate of the New Popular Front at Matignon, said she was ready to become Prime Minister. “When there is a political crisis, you have to respond to it. There is a need for a person from the left, if it has to be me, I will do it,” declared the economist and climate diplomat.
“The New Popular Front did not win an absolute majority” in the early legislative elections but “it achieved a success that responds to the social and ecological emergency” in France, and “it is therefore a left-wing policy that must be implemented”, says the 73-year-old architect of the Paris Agreement.
“The pension reform must be repealed”
But what left-wing policy? It will have to re-establish “tax justice”, ensure “the revival of social dialogue on salaries” and overhaul the pension reform: “We must repeal the reform, freeze it, whatever we want, but we are not implementing it”, assures Laurence Tubiana, who also wants to repeal the immigration law.
Within the left-wing bloc, La France Insoumise continues to push the name of Reunion Islander Huguette Bello, judging Laurence Tubiana to be too “Macron-compatible”. “I refused three or four times to join the government under Emmanuel Macron, because I disagreed with his policies”, she replies to them, highlighting her ability to “win majorities in the National Assembly”, to “snatch as many things as possible by finding consensus”.
Laurence Tubiana also says she is “obsessed” by the number of voters who chose the National Rally: “we have to go and find some of them because they are angry, they think we don’t take care of them. The Yellow Vests were also that.” “François Ruffin said something very good: we have to be kind. Not brutalizing society is still the basis of democracy, right?” she concludes.
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