HASOn the evening of the second round of the legislative elections, left-wing and green leaders could rejoice. Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of early legislative elections a month earlier had taken them by surprise, mired as they were in divisions and in a political landscape dominated by the National Rally (RN). Under pressure, they managed to conclude a programmatic and electoral agreement and then reactivate the republican front against the far right. This allowed them to limit the strong advance of the RN, beat the outgoing majority and gain around forty seats compared to 2022. Above all, they obtained a (very) relative majority in the National Assembly.
In most advanced democracies, this situation would have put them in a favourable position to govern, following a sequence to which France is not accustomed. The head of state could have appointed a representative from his ranks or they could have turned to other group leaders – centre or right – to try to form a government. To be successful, these negotiations would have involved making and obtaining the necessary compromises to have the support or, failing that, the absence of opposition from an absolute majority of deputies. Not to make it seem possible to govern without extending the scope of a coalition of only 200 deputies.
But the institutional latitude of the president of the Vmy The Republic, which appoints the Prime Minister directly, allowed him to wait several weeks before engaging in exclusively bilateral negotiations, the main aim of which was probably not to damage his record. The preponderance of the position and the proximity of the presidential elections encouraged the other forces not to play the compromise card and to refuse to govern or to let others govern, until Marine Le Pen agreed not to censure a republican Prime Minister who was closer to her political line.
Sectarianism and unrealism
The New Popular Front (NFP) cadres are also responsible for this situation, and everything indicates that most of them had, in reality, no will to govern. By boasting, as Jean-Luc Mélenchon did, about the issue of “the whole program, nothing but the program” Although the NFP was short of around a hundred deputies, they gave rise to accusations of sectarianism and unrealism. By allowing themselves more than two weeks to nominate their candidate for Matignon and by rejecting the names that were most likely to create compromises, they showed their divisions and reduced the pressure on the head of state. By announcing – for La France insoumise and Les Ecologistes – that they would censure a possible Cazeneuve government, they played the all-or-nothing card that left the position of ending the crisis and “monitoring” the RN.
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