HAS According to certain statements, Emmanuel Macron has just offered La Manif pour Tous his revenge by appointing Michel Barnier as Prime Minister. The dissolution would trigger a conservative revolution, just as the defeat at Waterloo allowed Louis XVIII to regain his throne, or the defeat in 1870 allowed Adolphe Thiers and his “Versailles” to triumph. We will not push the chronology back to Vichy so as not to force a line that is already exaggerated and caricatured. What would conservatism be today?
The first question that this government raises is its legitimacy. We will no longer be surprised by the surprise of the voters. After a wave of support for the National Rally was announced and then an explosion of the New Popular Front was documented, it was finally the Republican right, with its forty-seven seats, and the outgoing majority, albeit sanctioned, that would emerge victorious. After so many powerful social movements, the “yellow vests”, the pension reform and the farmers, highlighting the weakening of political representation, this coincidence seems, to say the least, dangerous. If Emmanuel Macron wanted to get there, why not have he given Lucie Castets a chance beforehand, so that the motions of censure could prepare public opinion? By default, it is a conservative interpretation of her role, insofar as her decision is the one that best perpetuates her own influence.
The second question concerns the affinities that seem to unite part of Barnier’s government. Has the Manif pour tous just taken revenge? By focusing on the past statements and votes of Laurence Garnier, Bruno Retailleau or Patrick Hetzel, this highly political narrative lacks perspective. Is it necessary to recall that 94% of MPs from the Union for a Popular Movement (formerly Les Républicains) and 83% of MPs from the Union of Democrats and Independents voted against opening up marriage to same-sex couples in 2013? Should we add that behind this apparent unanimity, positions were sometimes more nuanced or paradoxical than they appear?
When rights change
If Gérard Larcher and Valérie Pécresse led the processions of La Manif pour tous, François Fillon, on the other hand, always refused to join them. Should we go back even further and recall the 97% of votes of the Rally for the Republic (RPR) and the 98.5% of the Union for French Democracy (UDF, ex Modem) against the PACS? François Bayrou claims that “Opposing the adoption of children by a homosexual couple. (…) It is a fight for civilization, for humanity.” (the crossSeptember 22, 1998), or Charles de Courson denouncing a “deterioration of the social fabric” (National Assembly, 2my meeting of 8 June 1999)? Focus on Christine Boutin [ancienne ministre du logement et de la ville du premier gouvernement Fillon] in the past or about Laurence Garnier today is superficial.
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