La France Insoumise and Covid-19

Submitted by AWL on 6 April, 2020 - 7:29 Author: Igor Tahm-Kench
La France Insoumise

After agreeing with the government to "leave the controversies for later", Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the MPs of La France Insoumise have spoken. On a live LCI broadcast on Monday 30 March, the head of LFI opined that "the time has come to ban posted worker contracts, to repatriate posted workers by putting in the papers, or to keep them here and treat them properly", because "in France lorries are still coming in from a series of countries where there is no containment and which can therefore these lorries and be vectors for disseminating the virus".

LFI's answer to the virus: foreign workers go home? Papers, please! A nauseating and stupid slogan in the face of a virus that knows neither borders nor nationalities! But Mélenchon likes to play up to his "true-blue Frenchman" image. He has previously accused posted workers of stealing French jobs. At a time that calls for cooperation and solidarity between countries, as Christophe Prudhomme, emergency doctor from Seine-Saint-Denis pointed out, this demagogy is sordid. Shame on all those who are agitating for the closing borders all over Europe and the world.

On another note, but in the same key, in an opinion piece in a Sunday paper of March 30, LFI MPs hailed the "workers who are ready to do the utmost if asked" (the bulk of the workers in question are broadly critical, not to say angry, about the way Macron is sending them over the top!). And Mélenchon proposes a "government of national salvation" to replace Macron... in order – among other things – to relocate production back to France so as not to depend on workers abroad. But the rebellious spirit of the LFI has its limits: the party's MPs all joined all the other deputies of the country, making 572 deputies out of 572, in the most beautiful unanimity, to adopt the Bill put forward by [President] Macron and [Prime Minister Éduard] Philippe to grant 350 billion euros to the bosses... but don't be too hard on them: after all, the money was spent in order to better exploit... the French!

• From convergencesrevolutionnaires.org

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