The New Popular Front seems well on the way to following the old Nupes into oblivion. The four parties have been unable to agree on the name of a future prime minister to submit to the president. Meanwhile, a new president of the Assemblée Nationale will be elected on Thursday, and this may give President Macron a pretext to say that the “true majority” in the AN belongs to the party of its president, who could be the Macroniste Yaël Braun-Pivet, the current incumbent–assuming that Braun-Pivet, who was as unhappy about the precipitous dissolution as Gabriel Attal, can still be called a Macroniste. In any case, if the NFP fails to agree by Thursday, the president could attempt to foreclose the choice by naming a prime minister on his own. But that PM would be as unlikely to survive a confidence vote as one named by the NFP. Furthermore, Attal’s resignation, initially rejected, will be accepted on Tuesday, and the caretaker government’s freedom to maneuver will thereafter be sharply limited by the constitution. So we are at an impasse.
It may be necessary to name several non-viable prime ministers and watch each of them go down in flames before the deputies come to their senses. That is Dominique de Villepin’s hypothesis. There is, however, no guarantee that they will come to their senses even then. An exit from the crisis would require a compromise between the NFP and some centrist grouping, a compromise that for the moment both sides reject in no uncertain terms. On both sides the grounds for this rejection are dubious: the left retains the illusion that with some 182 seats vs 168 for the centrist bloc, it has decisively “won” the right to govern. One cannot help attributing this illusion to the majoritarian thinking instilled by the presidential logic of the regime. But the election transformed the regime type from semi-presidential to parliamentary overnight, and a new logic reigns. Compromise is necessary, but the willingness to compromise is absent. Indeed, a logic of demonization has emerged. For the left, Macron is a monster; for the center, the left, especially La France Insoumise, is unfrequentable. And for the both, the RN remains untouchable and “undemocratic,” even though its share of the vote implies that its democratic weight must be reckoned with, however distasteful that may be.
If the impasse cannot be overcome, months of uncertainty and even chaos lie ahead, with the only escape being a presidential resignation and yet another election–which will, however, leave the current AN in place, with all its contradictions–there can be no further dissolution for another 11 months. In part, it is the prospect of just such a resignation that is contributing to the impasse, as all the présidentiables–Attal, Faure, Mélenchon, Philippe, Darmanin, Le Maire, Wauquiez, Bertrand, etc.–stake out intransigent positions that they hope will serve them if they run for president rather than seeking compromises that would make it possible to form a government with the current Assembly. The deep flaws of the Fifth Republic’s constitution have been exposed to the light of day as never before.
1 Comment
A theory. The effect of this last election has largely been to undo the effects of Pope Leo XIII’s rally. If that assumption can be taken as true there is a limited data set from 1876 to 1889 during which the monarchist/nationalist block obtained, in 1876, 162 seats, in 1877 159 seats, in 1881 88 seats, in 1885 201 seats, and in 1889 210 seats. During those years the Assembly was largely split into three camps….a Left Wing Republican Union, a centrist Moderate Republican block and a right wing Nationalist/Monarchist block. In this regard the current situation actually seems to return to a certain political tradition rather than being something completely novel. I of course agree with the observations here that the current left wing block seems to be less inclined to work together with either themselves or the moderates than in the 1876-89 period.