Lhistory will remember that the first motion of censure wiped out by Elisabeth Borne emanated from the ranks of the left, that it was tabled at the initiative of La France insoumise (LFI) even before the Prime Minister delivered her general policy statement on Wednesday July 6, and that it has hardly been emulated beyond its ranks. Even six socialist votes were missing when the vote took place on Monday 11 July.
This stab in the water sums up the contradiction facing the left at the dawn of this XVIe legislature. She dreams of establishing herself as the number one opponent of Emmanuel Macron and owes a proud candle to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who managed to bring her together under the Nupes label during the legislative campaign. Today, 151 deputies sit on the left in the Hemicyle, nearly double what they were in the previous Assembly.
But this coalition of left-wing forces must reckon with the presence of another weighty opponent, the extreme right, monolithic behind Marie Le Pen. At the end of a quiet campaign, the former patron of the National Rally (RN) managed to bring 89 elected RNs (including herself) into the National Assembly. She coaches them as patroness of the parliamentary group.
In this very particular conjuncture, two complex questions arise for the left. The first is to determine who is its main enemy when the Republican front has just exploded after twenty years of more or less satisfactory operation. The second is to adopt a style of opposition likely to increase its credibility over the next five years.
The choice of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who no longer sits in the National Assembly but has installed one of his faithful, Mathilde Panot, at the head of the LFI group, is that of a frontal opposition not only to the President of the Republic, which he describes as “minority”but at the Ve Republic whose presidential logic he fights. Challenge to the rules established with a first showdown, in the Finance Committee, around the admissibility of certain amendments; rejection, in alliance with the elected RN and the Les Républicains party, of a provision of the health bill which opened the possibility of restoring border controls… So far, the rest of the left is following it without batting an eyelid because the will of the Socialist Party, the ecologists and the Communist Party is to be clearly identified in the camp of the opponents.
Define a common strategy
Ultimately, however, the radicalism of LFI could pose a problem. First, it fuels a trial of anti-republicanism which in turn trivializes the far right. Right-wing ministers like Gérald Darmanin do not hesitate today to dismiss the two camps back to back, relying on some of the phrases of the “rebellious” such as « The police are ». The best way to cut through these insinuations is to be flawless in your use of vocabulary.
The very evolution of Marine Le Pen is a problem for Jean-Luc Mélenchon because, if the president of the RN group also criticizes “a staggering power”, she refuses on the other hand to mistreat the institutions which she now considers as a springboard. She therefore proclaims that she wants to be useful to the French and promises to embody a « opposition constructive »with the desire to send the left back to the camp of the troublemakers.
To be credible, it will not be able to permanently play the obstruction a fortiori on its favorite themes such as the ecological transition. Most of its components are experienced in the parliamentary game and the art of compromise. To hope to weigh, they must be able to define a common strategy, to listen to each other, to enrich themselves. Otherwise, the Nupes will quickly be doomed.