22.08.2024

At an impasse

Paul Russell looks at the extraordinary difficulties in finding a prime minister who can command a workable majority. However, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally seems quite content to bide its time till the 2027 presidential election

Unanimity never lasts long in politics. Having requested, and obtained, a truce among deputies in the Assemblée Nationale over the thorny question of choosing a new prime minister, with the afterglow of the Olympics fading fast, Emmanuel Macron is being challenged anew.

Following the car-crash result of the president’s sudden call for a general election - one in which Macron hoped the electorate would see sense and return his right-of-centre party (renamed Renaissance) much strengthened - the results could hardly be worse from his point of view. The left union, the New Popular Front (NFP) of socialists, communists, greens and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI), increased its seat total compared to the outgoing assembly, meaning that Renaissance slipped to second place. Previously, when it was called En Marche and then Ensemble, it had dominated the assembly with an absolute majority, but as a result of the June 30-July 7 elections, it lost that majority to NFP. Third place went to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (NR) after an unexpected drop of support, but, as in every previous election, it increased its number of deputies nevertheless.

Caretaker

After the elections Gabriel Attal, Macron’s prime minister, tendered his resignation, but Macron insisted he stay on as caretaker. Is there some urgency and could the Assemblée Nationale muddle along bill by bill? Well, a fiscal deadline looms and France is carrying a heavy debt. A draft finance bill for 2025 must be presented to parliament by October 1, and before that the European Commission awaits France’s proposals for dealing with its excessive deficit.

Because it is the largest party in the legislature, the NFP claims the right to put forward a candidate for prime minister from its own ranks. It has proposed Lucie Castets, a member of the Socialist Party.¹ Prior to the general election, Castets was unknown - an economist and technocrat in the civil service. Although affiliated with the Socialist Party, she has kept her distance following disagreements with François Hollande, when he was president. Possibly Mélenchon’s backing (needed because he has the largest number of deputies in the NFP) stems from this gap between Hollande and her.

Macron is proposing a pact with six objectives, including the defence of secularism. This is a highly inflammatory subject, even within the NFP, whose parties hold highly divergent views. In its programme for the legislative elections, Renaissance and the Macronists declared that they wanted to reaffirm secularism “against the battering rams of Islamists and extremists”. Recalling the ban on wearing the abaya (an overgarment worn by women from the shoulders to the feet) decided in September 2023 and denounced by part of the left, Macron promised to fight “for secularism in all our public services”.

This aim was shared by most of the deputies of the Republicans (LR), heirs to the Gaullist party of yesteryear, except for a rump, headed by their chair, Éric Ciotti, who had called for an electoral alliance with National Rally. LR expelled Ciotti, but on the same day a court found in his favour and he was reinstated, to the fury of rank-and-file LR members.

There might also be some common ground on the reform of state institutions. Since its earliest incarnation, Mélenchon and LFI have been calling for a “Sixth Republic”, with greatly diminished presidential powers. Although Macron does not like it, several of his deputies are keen to move closer to this project.

Within the NFP, there are different tactical pacts around issues such as the environment and nuclear energy, where the left holds differing opinions, even within its constituent parts. And, of course, the NFP views on questions such as defence and taxation are completely different from those on the right; all of which means that for the moment, there is no consensual arrangement in sight.

Renaissance is still of the view that deputies can be peeled off from the NFP, who, along with those from some of the minor parties, will be sufficient to force through legislation on a case-by-case basis, while keeping out the NR and NFP. When Lucie Castets was nominated, Macron suggested she disengage from the NFP; she refused.

President Macron might be experiencing a certain malicious pleasure in watching the parties compete for the key role of prime minister, but time is pressing. Gabriel Attal, France’s youngest prime minister and the second shortest in office, is preparing the grounds of his departure with two objectives in mind. First, it appears that he is contemplating disengaging Renaissance from Macron and re-invigorating its dispirited deputies by placing the party at arm’s length from the president.² Second and looking further ahead, he has his eye on the presidency itself, when the next election rolls around in 2027.

Summoned

Macron has summoned the heads of parties and political groups to a roundtable at the Elysée palace, (equivalent to 10 Downing Street) on August 23, to allow the president to decide who among them he would nominate as prime minister. Macron still hopes to find a majority in the Assemblée Nationale to support him. For the time being, two names are circulating in the presidential party: Bernard Cazeneuve and Xavier Bertrand, a figure despised by the left. More than ever, a political impasse seems increasingly likely. While Macron struggles to appoint a prime minister and complete his mandate, LR and NR do not want to get involved. The NFP is being pushed by its voters to assume the governing role, but does not have the parliamentary means.

No-one is happy with this situation - except perhaps NR, which is biding its time, and LR, which is hoping to rebuild. LR has no interest in participating in any coalition with Macron, who is widely regarded as a lame duck. Everything is blocked on the left as well as the right.

1. On LFI’s website, the candidate is presented as “Madame Lucie Castets”! True, French is a more formal language than English, but one fairly recent change is that official communications do not refer to ‘Mademoiselle’ (Miss) any longer: all women are now addressed as ‘Madame’. But the LFI betrays its ‘moderate’ alignment on its membership application page, where readers are addressed using the formal ‘vous’ for ‘you’, whereas a similar page from the Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français) uses the informal ‘tu’. That has been customary in communist parties everywhere where formal and informal modes of address are part of the language.↩︎

2. Long gone are the halcyon days of Macron’s first election as president, when his party secured an absolute majority in the assembly and each deputy was required to sign an oath of allegiance, swearing to vote according to Macron’s wishes. A great many of these deputies had never seen so much as the inside of a municipal town hall meeting. They complied meekly until subsequent elections proved that they were at risk of losing their seats for such fealty.↩︎