If it is not a capitulation, it looks like it: declared opponent of the pension reform, recognized as such in the polls, the National Rally (RN) seems to have accepted the decline in the retirement age to 64 years, to the edge of a possibly renewable strike movement supported by the inter-union. “I think Emmanuel Macron will succeed in getting his reform passed. I even think that, alas, the country has resigned itself to this”, breathes Sébastien Chenu, right arm of Marine Le Pen. The vice-president of the National Assembly, elected from a constituency in the North where the rejection of the reform is massive, hardly believes in a France at a standstill in the coming days: “In times of crisis, of inflation, people don’t go up to the barricades. There may be people in the street but we are not going into a big strike. »
This would, moreover, be the scenario most favorable to the National Rally, which remained comfortably below the waterline in the debate in the National Assembly, between the heartbreaks of the deputies Les Républicains (LR), the heckling of the “rebellious” and the differences of the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes). Sidelined in the parliamentary debate, the RN was present in large numbers, yawned or sighed a lot but spoke little, or else in a vacuum: there were not many people left to hear Marine Le Pen defend her motion of censure in closing debates, on the night of Friday 17 to Saturday 18 February.
It does not matter, convinces the RN, who played without false note a single score: that of respectability. “Overall, they are doing well because they are not questioned about their personal development on the pension reform, nor about the credibility of their project [Marine Le Pen a renoncé à la retraite après quarante annuités pour tous en pleine campagne présidentielle], observes Brice Teinturier, Deputy CEO of Ipsos. The French have understood that the RN is opposed to this reform, even if it is less present than LFI [La France insoumise] in the denunciation. It does not harm him. »
« Contradiction interne »
A hardening of the movement would put the RN in front of a dilemma: how to respond to the desire to do battle from its popular base, particularly affected by the reform, while speaking with its growing electorate from the right, hostile to any attempt to block from the country ? In opinion polls, the first population largely wins, with high levels of support for a renewable strike, similar to those of leftist supporters. “They are caught in an internal contradiction because their popular base is very anti-reform of pensions, but the RN cannot appear as a power of disorder, analyzes Mr. Teinturier. This explains their rather convoluted position. Marine Le Pen will have to take a ridge path between being close to the social movement, without giving the feeling that she could add disorder herself. »
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