MACRON. Emmanuel Macron will face many questions after these legislative elections, marked by a partial victory which deprives him of an absolute majority and of certain tenors of LREM.
Look for a legislative result near you
[Mis à jour le 19 juin 2022 à 22h39] Will Emmanuel Macron have to change Prime Minister after the election? The question is not so trivial. Admittedly, Ensemble won the most seats, but the new coalition around the President of the Republic failed to offer him an absolute majority in the National Assembly, a far cry from the triumph of 2017. Importantly, his new Prime Minister has carried away, Elisabeth Borne succeeding in her bet in Calvados to gain legitimacy. But other figures have failed, including Amélie De Montchalin, the Minister for Ecological Transition, in position 5 of the government in the protocol order! A figure he will have to do without in the coming days like Brigitte Bourguignon Minister of Health) and Justine Benin Secretary of State for the Sea.
The disappointing score of Ensemble is all the more a blow that Emmanuel Macron went to the front at the very end of the campaign of the legislative, with four trips supposed to “illustrate the priorities of the five-year term”, in particular “youth” and “everyday security”, indicated his entourage to AFP. The opportunity to attack (finally?) his opponents. In the Tarn, the head of state castigated the “extreme” who “propose to add crisis to crisis by going back to the great historical choices of our Nation”. He attacked without naming them the coalition of the Nupes and the RN of Marine Le Pen who want, according to him, “to return to the alliances which, like NATO, ensure collective security and protect the peoples” at the moment “when I speak with Russia killing civilians in Ukraine”.
A role of “bulwark” which was not enough
Emmanuel Macron has indeed chosen to pose, as during the presidential election, as a bulwark against “the extremes”, sending the radical left and the far right back to back. He also affirmed his support for the internal security forces, “in particular our gendarmes” whom he visited at the Gaillac gendarmerie brigade. And to tackle in passing the controversial remarks of Mr. Mélenchon on “the police who kill”. “There are things that from where I am, I cannot accept, it is that we insult those who risk their lives to protect ours,” said the head of state. “I do not think that people who come from socialism or from republican political forces can make comments on justice, on the police like those made by Jean-Luc Mélenchon”, further estimated the President of the Republic, in an allusion to the controversy launched after the criticism of the leader of Nupes against the police, he had also declared a week earlier in the Paris region.
In Seine-Saint-Denis, land favorable to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Emmanuel Macron had also castigated, during a walkabout of more than an hour, the “project of prohibitions and taxation” of Nupes. “Their project explains to people that they are going to be prohibited from cutting down trees in their homes. There are 20 new taxes. This is not a good project for the country”, he had launched, taking up the arguments made by his camp for weeks, believing that the country “needs stability and ambition”. A call that was not fully heard given the scores this Sunday evening…
A majority too narrow to keep Elisabeth Borne?
The scenario of a victory for Together! this Sunday, but with a majority too narrow to allow the next bills to be validated easily in the Assembly and to keep the Prime Minister, has therefore come true. Faced with this threat, several voices were raised in the presidential majority, to question Elisabeth Borne, appointed for just over a month now. The Parisian summarized the content in a recent article. Some in the presidential camp already believe that without an absolute majority (therefore with a so-called “relative” majority, ie less than 289 deputies), the country would become “simply ungovernable”.
Emmanuel Macron could be faced not with a hostile majority, but with a problem of legitimacy. “I don’t see how she can hold up in such a context. She is going to live a real hell”, worries already a “baron of the executive”, quoted by the Ile-de-France daily. Emmanuel Macron would then be forced to replace a government boss who “does not print”, “out of time with the political moment”.
In this hypothesis of relative majority, the more moderate opposition groups know that they can play a pivotal role in the National Assembly and succeed in getting some of their measures passed in exchange for the support given to the power in place. This is what the group of Republicans aims for. The right ensured before the second round that it will sit in a “constructive opposition” which will not close the door to all the proposals of the presidential majority. But Emmanuel Macron could also play on the political past of his Prime Minister, formerly close to the left and the socialists, to convince some dissident voices in the group to join the majority on certain votes. Better, Emmanuel Macron can consider playing on both sides in a logic of “at the same time” to ensure additional votes sometimes on the right sometimes on the left according to the proposed project: rather economic or rather social. Still, the oppositions are not required to play the game of negotiations. Discussions would then begin on each text, opening the way to an almost unprecedented political situation and which should, for sure, vitalize the democratic debate in a politically fragmented France.
Too early to appoint a new prime minister?
Even with this semi-victory, the most likely scenario is that Emmanuel Macron will keep Elisabeth Borne in her place the day after the legislative elections. Firstly because Elisabeth Borne will not let go of her post so quickly, still indicates the Parisian who always quotes macronie executives on condition of anonymity: “She has shown that she has character, that she knows how to do despite It’s all about politics. So it’s going to be difficult to move it.”
Even with a disappointing score this Sunday, Emmanuel Macron is in fact faced with a real dilemma which he already faced a few weeks ago: apart from Elisabeth Borne, who could come and give a second wind to the majority? In addition to recognizing in a way a casting error, the names will have paraded so much after the presidential election and the procrastination will have been so numerous, that relaunching the reshuffle machine after the legislative elections would prove to be very risky for the credibility of the head of the state.
Emmanuel Macron forced into alliances to save his majority?
Without obtaining an absolute majority of 289 deputies, Emmanuel Macron will see his candidates sit with a relative majority in the first group of the Assembly. This has already been seen in 1988 when, after the re-election of François Mitterrand, the Socialist Party had obtained only 275 seats in the hemicycle. At the time, Michel Rocard, Edith Cresson then Pierre Bourdon, who had succeeded each other in the office of Prime Minister, had to ensure negotiations with other parties, the communist group or that of the union of the center most often, to glean a few votes and have the texts of laws adopted. In 2022, the leader of Macronie should be faced with the same situation and send his Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne in search of support in the opposition groups at the cost of some compromises so that his policy can be implemented.