A very critical article on the SFIO Interior Minister Jules Moch's harsh repression of the 1947 strikes published in the newspaper Combat at the end of 1947 led to his exclusion from the party.

All three were former Résistance fighters who advocated a left-wing political line between the French Communist Party and the anti-communist SFIO.

He had put a provisional end to his activities as a journalist in 1967, but from 1972 to 1986 he led the official weekly of the Socialist Party, L'Unité.

From 1981 to 1988, he regularly took part as such in the animated weekly political debate Vendredi Soir on France Inter with Jean d'Ormesson (a right-wing journalist and writer), Pierre Charpy (his counterpart as head of La Lettre de la Nation, the weekly of the Rally for the Republic) and Roland Leroy (editor-in-chief of the Communist daily L'Humanité).

After this, he returned to writing about history and politics by publishing four new books with Le Cherche-Midi, including François Hollande: journal d'une victoire (2012).