In the emblematic Le Bourbon brasserie, near the National Assembly, this aperitif bringing together around fifteen LR deputies takes on the appearance of collective therapy, in the early evening of Monday December 11. Their political group, alongside the opposition, has however just sent Gérald Darmanin and his immigration bill back into line. But at the table, it’s difficult to distinguish political victory from bitterness. “I think I made a big mistake,” breathes an elected official who has finally aligned himself with the line promoted by the party.
Most of those present were opposed to this motion for preliminary rejection. They also shunned the little party organized by their comrades, gathered to celebrate this success alongside Olivier Marleix or Éric Ciotti, a few hundred meters from here, at the National Assembly headquarters. The boss of the LR deputies in the Assembly puffs out his chest, big smile and glass of champagne in hand. “We could see that he was happy to have given Darmanin a right,” understands a deputy, present at this meeting, official this time.
Marleix presumed guilty
On the tails side therefore, the Republicans claim a parliamentary victory, as well as the scalp of the Minister of the Interior. On the other hand, a good handful of right-wing deputies are drowning their sorrows in a few glasses of whiskey, talking pessimistically about the future of their group over dinner. “It’s going to be good when there are around thirty deputies,” laughs an LR, fearing a potential dissolution. Late Monday afternoon, 40 out of 62 followed the group’s instructions, decided a few minutes before the final vote. 11 deputies abstain, and the two very Macron compatible Nicolas Forissier and Alexandre Vincendet are directly opposed to this motion for prior rejection. Nine elected officials do not take part in the vote – and many see it as a passive abstention. In all, a third of the deputies did not follow the decided line. If the divisions between parliamentarians have crystallized with less virulence than during the tumultuous retirement episode, they still remain a constant in the group. For some, the culprit is obvious: Olivier Marleix.
The disagreement is first and foremost political. “His visceral anti-macronism poses a problem. We have a Marleix problem, and we feel a disintegration of the group around him, week after week,” sighs an MP. And another agreed: “He lost his group, and his semblance of unity: we must not delude ourselves about this reality. Monday, among those who voted in favor of the motion to reject, some went there dragging your feet.” The maneuver used to convince his co-religionists to follow his line made more than one person spin. Several right-wing parliamentarians report that the boss of the LR deputies as well as the president of the party, Éric Ciotti, would have used the figure of the influential deputy Michèle Tabarot – initially opposed to imposing a snub on the government from the outset – to convince the other elected officials to follow the strategy. “They called the deputies telling them that Michèle (Tabarot) had changed her mind and finally agreed with them. In a group meeting before the vote, she said that she no longer supported this lousy management, and that “she was bending for the last time to the logic of group voting”, explains a deputy who witnessed the scene. And another added: “With us, there will be a before, and an after motion of rejection.”
The impossible unity
The unity of LR deputies, or the new sea serpent of this sixteenth legislature… According to Datan, a site listing the parliamentary activity of deputies, the Les Républicains group is considered, over the terms of office, as an increasingly less united group when it comes to voting, rising to the penultimate place in the ranking, just ahead of the Socialist Party. For parliamentarians therefore, the unmissable meetings at the Palais Bourbon follow one another and are similar, often undermined by divisions. This was the case during the pension reform, it is the case today with this immigration law. “Putting pressure on the deputies to finally be followed by only two thirds of his troops… In Sarko’s time, he would not have missed a single vote,” mocks an elected official.
Jérôme Nury, MP for Orne, denies having received pressure, but, like many others, puts the principle of party discipline into perspective. “I was not elected on an LR label, but on my name. Often, it sticks to the party line, but when that is not the case, I do the best for the people of Ornais.” A group weakened by individualism, and the different projections into the future that each person makes of it. The opportunity for a right-wing parliamentarian to discuss the reasons for his party’s existence. “The basic question, the one that structures the LR, is that of our future. We are divided between the objective alliance of anti-macronists, those who think they have the vocation to become the right wing of macronism at the end of the mandate, and those tempted by a union of the rights. Do we have no future, do we fall to the center, or to the extreme right? The legislature started a year and a half ago. Please… Draw me the LRs.
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