The ultra Le Pen comes to the rescue of Macron and Barnier and prevents the success of the French left’s censure motion

2024-10-08 17:43:38

Marine Le Pen’s far-right kept French conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier afloat in the first motion of no confidence that his government presented to the National Assembly on Tuesday.

Macron forms a right-wing government with Barnier at the helm and winks at Le Pen

The initiative, presented last Friday by the left-wing coalition of the New Popular Front (NFP), was debated and voted on in the lower house of Parliament, but had no chance of success, since the far-right National Rally (RN) had announced that he would not vote for it, as he ultimately did.

The motion obtained the support of 197 deputies out of the 289 needed and that represents an absolute majority. The 193 MPs of the PFN needed the support of the 142 MPs of Le Pen’s party and its allies. The sum of the left plus the far right would lead to the automatic termination of the government, given that the parties that compose it, i.e. the Macronist and conservative bloc of Los Republicanos (LR) – Barnier’s formation –, barely make up around 210 of the 589 deputies .

The French left justified the procedure with the “democratic deficit” on which, in the eyes of the New Popular Front, the Executive is based. “Yours is the government of a destroyed party, supported by another party defeated three times in a month and which survives thanks to the far right rejected by two thirds of the French,” said the socialist leader Olivier, in charge of presenting the motion of censure. In his response Barnier disfigured the left that wants to censor his Executive”a priori”, before starting to act and stated that, even without an absolute majority, it is the group that enjoys the greatest support among Macronists and the traditional right.

The far right, to which President Emmanuel Macron has given the key to Barnier’s continuity, had already said that, for the moment, it has no intention of overthrowing the Executive – whose Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, is very close to his theses on immigration. “We chose not to fall into chaos, not to immediately censor Michel Barnier to give him the chance to develop a project. If this does not satisfy us, we will censor,” Sébastien Chenu, of the National Group, said on Monday. Last Tuesday, the deputy of the RN, Guillaume Bigot, said; “Our group looks forward to voting in favor.” [la moción de censura]but we won’t do it today; not with the New Popular Front”.

Olivier Faure himself had recognized in an interview that it was “probable” that the censure motion would fail, assuring that the far right had “decided to support” the Executive without participating and stating that the vote was “an opportunity to say who is in opposition and who is not”.

A first warning of parliamentary weakness

Although the government passed its first censure motion, Tuesday’s is an early warning of its parliamentary weakness and its dependence on the far right for survival. On Sunday, Le Pen said at a rally that the Barnier government’s “weak democratic legitimacy” will lead to its fall and another early legislative election, which can be held legally from July 2025 if Macron deems it appropriate. “We believe there will be elections in less than a year,” the far-right politician said.

The one discussed this Tuesday is the 35th censure motion since Macron’s party lost its absolute majority in the 2022 legislative elections, a symptom of the political instability that the country has experienced since then. The procedure in France is relatively simple, as it is not necessary to present an alternative to the Government.

The text proposed by the socialist, communist, environmentalist and France Insoumise deputies claims that the existence of the Barnier executive, appointed by Macron just over a month ago, “is a denial of the result of the latest legislative elections” of 7 July, in that, against all odds, the left bloc became the leading parliamentary force.

“On the basis of these results, the President of the Republic should have nominated for Matignon the person proposed by the New Popular Front, the coalition with the largest number of seats (193) in the National Assembly. It was then up to him to propose a government to the President of the Republic and try to build majorities text by text”, we read in the text.

With the appointment of Barnier, Macron broke the tradition of appointing prime minister a figure from the parliamentary majority of the Assembly, hiding behind the announcement of the center and right-wing parties, including his own, that, in the event of a motion of censure, they would vote against any figure in the progressive coalition – proposed by economist Lucie Castets.

“In the end, the President of the Republic preferred to hide behind the so-called “institutional stability” to break with this republican tradition and end up appointing a prime minister who was a member of a political formation that lost the elections, which he did not clearly require a republican dam. [contra la extrema derecha] and who is responsible for perpetuating policies applied for seven years and repeatedly punished by the electorate at the ballot box.” The PFN maintains that the institutional stability “so sought after by the President of the Republic is in reality now an opportunistic agreement with the National Group, in absolute contradiction with the immense republican impulse that occurred on 7 July”.

Last week Barnier gave the traditional general policy speech in which he presented the main lines of his government, among which he mentioned immigration control. Next Thursday the prime minister will face the presentation of the budget project for 2025, with which he intends to cut the French public deficit with spending cuts and higher taxes. The socialist leader criticized the government line pursued by Barnier. “The increase for the richest is a smokescreen (…) In reality, the middle classes will pay with tariff increases and cuts to services,” Faure said.

At the same time, it became known on Tuesday that the impeachment proceedings against Macron brought by the left-wing party France Insoumise will not be discussed in the plenary session of the National Assembly after Le Pen’s abstention in the conference bringing together the leaders of the parliamentary groups.