The parties are getting ready for the second round of the legislative elections. They agree year after year to form a republican front against the National Rally, even if this is stuck in certain constituencies. The RN hopes to have an absolute majority to be able to govern freely. But several leading figures in the presidential camp are arguing in favour of a grand coalition ranging from certain LR members to the socialists and environmentalists, if ever the RN only has a relative majority.
On Monday evening, on TF1, Gabriel Attal defended the idea of a “plural” assembly, as a nod to Lionel Jospin’s plural left, which would be composed of “different political forces” including future Macronist deputies. The same day, on BFMTV, the outgoing president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet (Renaissance) called for a “grand coalition ranging from the LR to the ecologists and the communists” to govern France in the aftermath of the legislative elections. “For months, for years, I have been arguing for this republican coalition of progressive forces, therefore on the basis of values,” she insisted.
“I saw in the Assembly the president of the communist group André Chassaigne who is a great republican, responsible, with whom we can build. On the other side, the Republicans who did not sell out to the RN are also great democrats”, she judged. As for the president of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand (Les Républicains), he pleaded for a “government of national revival”.
Tondelier and Ruffin open the door…
The head of the Ecologists Marine Tondelier has not closed the door to a grand coalition. On Tuesday, on TF1, she estimated that “we will surely have to do things that no one has ever done before in this country” in the event of an Assembly without a clear majority. “Politics in this country will not be able to continue as before. We will have to change,” declared the ecologist, calling for “solutions to be found” and for “some in the center, on the right, to tell us how they want to work in the other direction.” “But what is certain is that it must be done on clear political bases: the question is rather ‘for what purpose?’ than with whom?'” “There will be no Macronist Prime Minister, for example,” she conditioned.
On the left, François Ruffin, who has broken with the leadership of La France Insoumise, has not completely ruled out this idea, but he has set his conditions. “There have been great moments in our history that have been made with this coalition, in particular we can think […] at the Liberation, where from the communists to the Gaullists there was a common government,” explained the outgoing deputy of the Somme on Tuesday, interviewed on RMC.
“Now, it was still around a common project,” he continued. “The three measures that I put on the table are the return of a wealth tax, because there is an enrichment of the richest in our country, the citizens’ initiative referendum, so that the French can have a say more regularly, and the repeal of the pension reform at 64 years old,” he indicated.
…But Bompard and Rousseau are opposed
La France Insoumise, on the other hand, categorically rejects the idea of this coalition with its uncertain outlines. “The Insoumis will only govern to implement their program, nothing but the program,” Manuel Bompard, the coordinator of La France Insoumise, said on BFMTV on Tuesday.
An opinion shared by Sandrine Rousseau. “I’m not ready to change my program […] “I don’t want to betray the voters,” declared the Green MP from Paris, re-elected in the first round. For Sandrine Rousseau, this coalition “makes no sense.” “We would be making a mistake if we gave the impression that the substance is not important and that only the form counts,” she warned.