If Emmanuel Macron decides to appoint Bernard Cazeneuve to Matignon, he will do so with the assurance that Marine Le Pen will not censure his government.
Could the solution to the political impasse be called Bernard Cazeneuve? The former Prime Minister of François Hollande said on August 5, on LCIthat he would accept to be Prime Minister if the post were offered to him. “I have never refused to put wisdom where there is unreason. If it is necessary to do it collectively, I will always be ready,” he said. Monday, September 2, Emmanuel Macron discussed with him the possibility of his nomination.
Few elements of their conversations have leaked to the press, but the two men displayed their closeness to journalists, kissing each other on the cheek as they parted on the steps of the Elysée Palace. But Bernard Cazeneuve, despite this complicity, intends to set his conditions for the President of the Republic, a man he knows well for having been a minister in the same government, under François Hollande, but whom he holds in relatively low esteem politically. If he is appointed, he intends to implement “a real, credible left-wing policy” as well as a “real cohabitation with Emmanuel Macron”, he told Le Parisien via a close friend. Take it or leave it.
If he resigns himself to it, the head of state knows that Bernard Cazeneuve would tick a lot of boxes. First of all because he knows Matignon very well having occupied the place under François Hollande (December 2016 to May 2017), succeeding Manuel Valls. A considerable asset to be operational immediately. Bernard Cazeneuve had previously held several positions in the government: European Affairs, Budget and then the Interior. He notably faced the 2015 attacks in Paris. An experience that counts.
The Elysée, centrist deputies and part of the right are also sensitive to his fierce opposition to LFI. He has never hidden his aversion to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and had deplored the presence of La France Insoumise in the New Popular Front. He also left the PS after the agreement between the PS and LFI for the 2022 legislative elections.
According to information from Le Parisien, the problem lies, for Emmanuel Macron, in Bernard Cazeneuve’s political will to call into question the pension reform. A real casus belli, a sacrifice that the president is not ready to make as long as he has other options. Furthermore, Bernard Cazeneuve would like to have free rein in the choice of his ministers, in particular for Bercy and for Foreign Affairs. According to Le Monde, these demands would not suit Emmanuel Macron.
Le Pen arbiter of Macron’s choice?
Another considerable obstacle faces Bernard Cazeneuve in the perspective of a nomination: the New Popular Front has so far remained united and is still on the line of a motion of censure or a rejection of any Prime Minister who does not implement a left-wing policy. The head of state had probably let the hypothesis of his nomination leak in order to take the pulse and observe whether the NFP parties would fracture over the scenario of a centre-left man appointed to Matignon.
Result: the 4 parties of the NFP are resisting disunity for the moment. LFI promises censure, the ecologists have made it known that the NFP line will be held and that they will do the same. It is also likely that the communists will vote for censure. The bigwigs of the Socialist Party are waiting to see and hear what Bernard Cazeneuve would propose. But even if the PS deputies most inclined to accept a coalition with a social democrat at its head were about forty not to vote for a motion of censure (out of 66 deputies), the support of the Assembly for Bernard Cazeneuve would be extremely fragile, even if the whole of the center and the right support him.
If we do the precise calculations, it is even very clear: Bernard Cazeneuve would not resist a motion of censure, unless the RN and Ciottist groups decide not to vote for it. In other words, the fate of Bernard Cazeneuve would be in the hands of the president of the RN group, who holds the line of her party and its allies in the Assembly: Marine Le Pen.
This Tuesday, September 3, Emmanuel Macron was planning to discuss with Marine Le Pen “the criterion of non-censorship” of the Cazeneuve option. The president wants to sound out the president of the far-right group, present her with the options and discuss what her parliamentarians would vote for in the event of Bernard Cazeneuve’s nomination. This would therefore place Marine Le Pen in the position of kingmaker. A role she probably did not expect on the evening of the second round of the legislative elections, after the cold shower of the results placing her behind the left and the central bloc.