The atmosphere is cordial this Wednesday August 30 in Saint-Denis. Emmanuel Macron invited party leaders to debate the major issues of the moment. Jordan Bardella is happy to be there. The studious student prepared well for the interview. He sent, in advance, a letter to the president which had its small effect. The head of the National Rally (RN) talks a lot, insults the head of state, argues. And arouses a certain admiration among the Macronists. “Bardella is convincing, really. You would think that he was going to behave that day like he does when he is on a TV set, in fact not at all,” says a leading Macronist. At the RN, we are stuffing ourselves. “We were the main interlocutors of this exchange, because the left was too folkloric and the right non-existent. We emerge strengthened from this sequence,” proclaims the vice-president of the Assembly Sébastien Chenu.
At the same time, a redemptive quest wins the majority. A question torments her. Should the RN be deprived of its two vice-presidencies in the National Assembly? Sébastien Chenu and Hélène Laporte have been leading the sessions since summer 2022. The perch is an uncomfortable seat, you cannot stretch your legs on it. But this chair is the symbol of legitimization of the National Rally. The Frontist deputies put parliamentary democracy to music. Sébastien Chenu shines with his ease, Hélène Laporte has not made any mistakes.
“The RN group is clearly working well. It is present and working,” noted the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet in October 2022. That’s the problem. Almost a year later, we remain there. The majority are facing a wall that is not crumbling. She observes, helplessly, the rise in power of the RN. “We bang our heads against the edges of the cage to stop their respectability,” admits a Renaissance executive. “Some colleagues are uncomfortable seeing the RN normalized and have not succeeded in re-demonizing it this year,” adds a Horizons MP.
The Frontist doctrine mixes respectable showcase and plasticity
In the Assembly, the Frontist doctrine is a clever mixture of respectable display and plasticity. No strong ideological backbone but a single slogan: “Be elusive”. Renaud Labaye, general secretary of the group, likes to invoke the image of an “oiled wrestler”. Do not give the opponent a hold, be protean, and adapt to the needs of the moment to become unassailable. An environmentalist amendment? Yes, the RN can vote for it. Tax-free overtime for retirees while campaigning for retirement at 60? No, it’s not incompatible. The map of permanent moulting, evolving according to opinion. Enough to complicate the work of the majority, often undermined by the positioning of RN elected officials.
Recent example: the first proposal put forward by the RN on the occasion of its parliamentary niche (which will take place on October 12) intends to have endometriosis recognized as a “long-term condition” (ALD) and “women victims of endometriosis, and who express the need, disabled workers”. Cold sweats in government. What to do ? Vote for a frontist text relating to a public health problem and give credibility to the RN? No way. A parade is looming. At the microphone of Radio J, on September 26, the Minister responsible for Equality between men and women Bérangère Couillard raises the possibility of a decree to “counter this text”. The sanitary cordon bends, but does not break. Reaction, on the RN side: “This decree only proves us right.”
Bruno Le Maire’s negotiations
The trap is set. Getting out of it obsesses the majority. But how ? The debate mixes strategic and moral considerations. Vote while holding your nose against consensual projects, even if it means respecting the extreme right. Establish a dike, at the risk of being sued for sectarianism. This last line is the majority within the Renaissance group. Others imagine a third way: rewriting each frontist amendment or proposal from top to bottom to erase the label. A minister sums up her dilemma in the face of a well-crafted text from the RN: “It’s not easy to answer yes or no. I want to say no. But in this case, we are not even further compromising the general interest ?”
This debate agitates the executive. Before summer, ministers discuss the public finance programming bill. The Republicans and the Liot group are already reluctant to support the majority. Concern is growing: what if the text does not pass? At the beginning of September, the RN deputy for Somme Jean-Philippe Tanguy received a message from Bruno Le Maire’s office. The Minister of the Economy wants to see him on this subject. He was received at Bercy, ten days later, to discuss a possible abstention from the RN group. “I thought about it, LR and Liot are not reliable, we cannot count on them, and I do not want to start the year on a 49.3, and send the signal to our European allies that France would be the only country who would need a 49.3 to agree on a budgetary trajectory”, Bruno Le Maire allegedly declared to him in substance.
The negotiations did not result in any agreement. Too risky. The risk of giving credibility to the RN is too great, and the dependence on Marine Le Pen’s group too important for the final vote on the text which must take place in November. It will ultimately be 49.3. This outcome erases nothing of the exchanges and attempts at negotiations initiated by the Minister of the Economy, to the great dismay of some of his colleagues, starting with Elisabeth Borne.
The ghost’s strategy
How tiring it is to box in a vacuum. In the Assembly, the majority has the feeling of confronting a ghost. The RN is not distinguished by excessive activity. The numbers are stubborn. Regardless of their assiduous presence in the Hemicycle throughout the year, at the end of July, the RN deputies had only tabled 8.87% of the total amendments, far behind La France insoumise, Les Républicains and the majority.
“Lazy”, “they are stuck on the bottom”, “not at the technical level”… The majority identified the Achilles heel of the RN group. She has a memory: Marine Le Pen paid at the polls for her disastrous debate against Emmanuel Macron in 2017, during which she displayed her technical deficiencies. The parallel has its limits. It is difficult to bring to the attention of the French the supposed weakness of the parliamentary work of 89 deputies. This is evidenced by the failure of the anti-RN Task Force launched by Renaissance. Not everyone is connected to LCP or to X (formerly Twitter). “It is not easy,” notes Renaissance MP for Essonne Robin Reda. “The time in the Hemicycle is standardized time rather than time for exchanges where these failures could be brought to light. We must invest ourselves to go get the little beast.” A pillar of the group sums it up bluntly. “The more they talk, the more stupid they say. But since they don’t talk…”
They speak little… And vote like Normans. Of the 1,800 public ballots of the legislature, until June 12, RN deputies abstained in 16.6% of the ballots. Well ahead of LFI (11.4%), the ecologists (9.0%), the socialists (8.9%) and the Republicans (8.2%). Abstention, this parliamentary “at the same time”. Neither yes nor no. Neither sectarianism nor smug dubbing. We can give a diverse political reading to this choice depending on our interests. The majority want to believe that this ambiguity will not be eternal. In 2027, the time will come for the campaign and the confrontation of proposals. Then the opponent will be in the boxing ring. “The situation is comfortable for them, but it will not last forever. They are having a quiet legislature, but it will not be a quiet campaign,” thunders Renaissance MP Marc Ferracci.