Emmanuel Macron is pat, as they say in chess. It’s not checkmate, but he has no more possible moves to get out of it. Sacrificing his queen – Elisabeth Borne – does not even allow him to save himself. A president blocked, in short, by this political crisis born of the pension reform and the 49.3 which concluded it. If he did win the vote in the National Assembly, narrowly escaping a motion censuring the government of Elisabeth Borne, the rest of his five-year term promises to be complicated, if not difficult.
How to govern? With whom to govern? He who had thought he could reform with a relative majority, text by text, compromise by compromise, sometimes with Les Républicains, sometimes with part of the Nupes, no longer has any advantages: neither with LR, a party divided and unfathomable between the Ciotti line and the Pradié line, nor with the PS and EELV, which have become the zealous arms of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
In government, the gazes of the most political ministers but also of Emmanuel Macron’s old road partners are no longer directed only to the right – whom the Head of State has understood that he can no longer really trust – but move more and more to the left. A heavyweight in the government, from the ranks of the right, affirms it: “I will not be shocked to see communist ministers integrate the government. We have a closeness with them, on nuclear power, on industry. Their concern , it’s the LFI line. It’s ours too. LFI, it’s a tyranny.” To believe that he even hopes so.
Government of national unity
For the past few days, some have been singing an old refrain in the president’s ear: “Government of national unity”. A swear word from history that is only brought out on rare occasions, in the aftermath of conflicts or even serious political crises. Emmanuel Macron had already been entitled to the same music at the time of the Covid pandemic. And he had been strongly seduced by the idea, last June, when the legislative elections offered him only a relative majority. He then invited the bosses of political parties, from Marine Le Pen to Fabien Roussel. To the communist, he entrusts “to consider” the constitution “of a government of national unity”. The same confirmed to AFP that he was working on the construction of an enlarged executive. “It will be communists at the LR”, he specifies at this time, excluding Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen from the adventure. Fabien Roussel will hesitate for a while, suggesting that if the project was “very high level” the Communists would be “ready to participate”, and will end up declining under the pressure.
If the case fell apart in the summer of 2022, it resurfaces today more seriously than ever in the minds of some of the president’s faithful. On the set of Sunday in politics, on March 19, the Minister of the Economy Bruno le Maire did not hide it: “We must widen our majority.” A way of doing, according to one of his colleagues, “to put the genius in the box”. A government of national unity, therefore, ranging from the Communists to the Republicans, with socialists and ecologists, would make it possible to form a border with LFI and the RN, parties that Emmanuel Macron does not consider as “republican” nor as “of government”.
Abdication
There remains the obstacle of the human system. Nothing, obviously, can convince a Fabien Roussel or any other communist to go a long way with the right and Emmanuel Macron. And yet… The temptation to branch off in the exercise of power in order to better reap the power lost in the balance of power on the left is stronger than one might think with Fabien Roussel and many Communists. Asked about the possibility, a communist sighs and laughs, before taking a serious tone: “You know, the objective of the PCF is the same as that of EELV and the PS: to pass in front of LFI and dethrone them. Fabien in 2022 reinstalled a communist pride, it allows us to exist again… The work is not finished. We are still looking for the right recipe.”
In his latest book (Happy days are ahead of usCherche Midi, 2023), Fabien Roussel does not hide it: “Already, we have found a place in the political landscape. But we have to do better […]. We need to strengthen our executive policy to train more leaders.” And ministers?
There remains a much greater obstacle: convincing Emmanuel Macron. The Head of State does not seem to give an inch to read the confidences of certain ministers at the end of a meeting at the Elysée, Tuesday, March 21 in the morning. The president would not consider dissolution, reshuffle or referendum. The option of a government of national unity would be too costly for him, so much would it look like a form of abdication. A particularly republican abdication since a unity government would suppose, according to the purists in the entourage of Emmanuel Macron, to integrate the National Rally into it. It would then be the first day of the rest of his reign, the first day of the rest of a five-year term which would no longer be the “Macron five-year term”. Checkmate ?