Two days after the motion of censure overthrew the French Government of conservative Michel Barnier, the president, Emmanuel Macron, intensified political contacts this Friday to find a successor, opening the door to the socialists but with the priority still on the center right.
The great novelty of the day was that a delegation at the highest level of the Socialist Party (PS), led by its leader, Olivier Faure, paraded through the Elysée for a meeting unauthorized by La Francia Insumisa (LFI) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which is the hegemonic formation of the majority leftist alliance in the National Assembly, called the New Popular Front (NFP).
The meeting was welcomed with enthusiasm by those who aspire for the PS to abandon the maximalism of Mélenchon, opposed to any pact and insisting on calling for Macron’s resignation, to unblock a gridlocked legislature.
The 60 socialist deputies constitute for them an opportunity to remove Marine Le Pen’s far-right from the equationwho has rebelled as an unreliable ally, as demonstrated in the motion of censure against Barnier.
But Faure went to the Elysée with his own demands: that the next prime minister will be leftist and that the president also has the other components of his electoral coalition, that is, LFI, communists and environmentalists.
“We will not participate in any government led by a right-wing prime minister,” assured the socialist leader at the end of the meeting with Macron, flanked by his spokespersons in the National Assembly, Boris Vallaud, and the Senate, Patrick Kenner.
The socialists also demand “a change of course” in politics and “end Macronism”, demands based on the results of the legislative elections of July 7, in which the left snatched the majority from the presidential bloc, which was also ahead in votes by the extreme right.
The idea of the PS is to find a pact of circumstances between the parties most in the center of the parliamentary arcto carry out a provisional Government, until legislative elections can be convened again next summer, and based on a lowest common denominator.
Faure, who He denied betraying the leftist allianceassured that the president received them “without preconditions”, but came out with a single commitment, that of speaking with his other left-wing partners, something that the president will do, including LFI.
Look to the right
The Elysée does not seem to find the necessary numbers in socialist support to unclog the legislature, especially because His presence in the Executive would cause the flight of others.
Starting with the moderate right of The Republicans (LR), who should be the next to pass through Macron’s office, but according to the BFMTV channel They are not willing to accept a left-wing prime minister.
The acting Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, champion of the most conservative current of LR, very close to the extreme right on immigration and security issues, made it clear in a message on social networks: “We cannot accept those who refuse to denounce the crazy ‘Melenchonista’ drifts and voted for an irresponsible motion of censure.”
With the PS but without LR the accounts do not work out either and if Le Pen does not support the right, Mélenchon does not support the left either, which This initiative is full of questions.
Without official communication from the Elysée, observers analyze the few gestures that overcome the palace barriers and that seem to indicate that Macron is not betting on a left-wing prime minister.
The name that sounds the most strongly is that of the centrist François Bayrou, Macron’s early ally, with whom aims to break some of the blockages that the conservative Barnier carried without losing the political line of Macronism.
Three times candidate for the Elysée, minister of Jacques Chirac’s conservative governments, the current mayor of Pau, 73 years old (the same age as Barnier), has the advantage that he is not conservative and, in addition, has the approval of Le Pen , with whom he shares the defense of a more proportional electoral system.
But there is nothing to indicate that he will not end up, like the former Brexit negotiator, in the clutches of the extreme right, with the results that are already known.
In the midst of these combinations, time is ticking for the president, who promised to have a new head of government “in a few days”but he sees how the calendar is getting on top of him.
France, which leads the opposition to the agreement with Mercosur in Europe, attended this Friday without a solid government to the advancement of that alliance praised in Montevideo by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
This urgency is added to those imposed by a national economy in a critical situation, which must face the growing tension in international markets without updated budgets. They place the French risk premium at levels equivalent to those of Greece.
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