I would definetely not call France Insoumise tankies. Their platform is basically what the Socialist Party’s platform was in the 80s, they pretty much only have a niche to occupy only because the socialists moved so far to the right. That being said, they do have the benefit of being vocal on anti-racist and anti-colonial policies.

I wish they were actual tankies. In France. The French Communist Party has some Marxist-Leninist memberd, but they are not the majority of the party right now. For a while, the PCF was in an Alliance with the Parti de Gauche (the precursor to France Insoumise), and only took parts in elections as part of this alliance. But Mélenchon, who used to rule Parti de Gauche and now rules France Insoumise, stopped making concessions to the Communist Parti (such as supporting their candidates in the few Communist Parti strongholds left in France), which was seen as a betrayal, and so the Communist parti elected as its leader Fabien Roussel, who is less favorable to alliances with FI unless there are other parties in it as well to avoid the PCF getting fully absorbed as a satellite of FI.

The problem is that despite the core of the PCF’s program being further left than FI’s program, the rethoric used by Roussel, the pojects he puts forwards and the ones he chooses to ally with are increasingly further right wing than FI. With FI being new and having more momentum, they’re the ones often demonized by the center and Roussel’s strategy is to make the PCF appear less scary than them. He is cultivating an older and whiter electorate that can be nostalgic of the time when the PCF was strong and scared of the new and strange FI. I would’ve liked the PCF to instead go further left than FI. But unfortunately, its move right is kind of in the continuation of the de-stalinisation that happened after the fall of tbe USSR. It’s a party with a rich history, more of an internal democracy than FI and deep ties with unions and other organizations, but the way it’s headed, it can’t go very far.

Then you have Force Ouvrière, a Trotskyite party. Problem with them is they kinda have their butt between two chairs. They take part in elections just to get known, while claiming the true change must come from a revolution… But aside from selling newspapers, they’re not doing much organizing. They’re neither really giving themselves the mean to act either in the political world or in the streets. They’re not in favor of seeking improvements through unions or electoral politics because they think small improvements will stop people from wanting to revolt.

This description fits most of the small leftist groups in France, but despite their similarities, their attachement to ideological purity keeps them from banding together