The Left Party is a Frenchdemocratic socialistpolitical party founded on 1 February 2009. Launched by parliamentarians Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marc Dolez on 12 November 2008, after their departure from the Socialist Party following the Congress of Reims, the PG brings together personalities and groups from different political traditions, and claims a socialist, ecologist and republican orientation. Politically located between the Socialist Party and the French Communist Party, the Left Party intends to federate all the sensitivities of the anti-liberal left — which he also calls "the other left" — within the same alliance. In 2008, the PG joined forces with the Communist Party of the United Left and six other left-wing and far-left organizations in the coalition of the Left Front, of which Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the candidate for the presidential election. The PG was co-chaired from the Le Mans Congress in November 2010, by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Martine Billard. In April 2016, the Left Party had 8,000 members. At the end of August 2014, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Martine Billard resigned, and the party leadership was then collectively ensured by the national secretariat. His weekly newspaper, L'Heure du peuple is sent to all members but also to simple subscribers. It is printed at more than 15,000 copies a week. In 2016, in view of the presidential and legislative elections of the following year, Jean-Luc Mélenchon formed a new movement, La France Insoumise, that the Left Party helped to animate.
History
It was founded in November 2008 by former Socialist senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon, deputy Marc Dolez, and other dissidents of the party together with the MARS movement. They had left the PS five days earlier, in protest of the result of the Reims Congress vote on motions, where the leftist motion they supported won only 19%. They were joined after by other members from the left of the Socialist Party, by people who hadn't been members of a political party before, and by dissidents from the Green Party following the deputy Martine Billard. In 2010 the PG was accepted in the Party of European Left. In November 2013, the PG joined the internationalBoycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. Co-presidents and co-founders Mélenchon and Billard stepped down from office in 2014. Since its 2015 congress, the party is led by its coordinators and spokespersons Eric Coquerel and Danielle Simonnet. On 2 July 2018 the party withdrew from the Party of European Left, not agreeing with the presence of the Greek party Syriza in the alliance.
Elected officials
Member of the European Parliament: Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Around 90 local elected officials, including two members of the Council of Paris, initially joined the party. This number has dropped since then.
Popular support and electoral record
The PG has not yet run independently in an election, so its base of support is hard to pin-point.
