FERRAND. The President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, has also been a LREM deputy for the 6th constituency of Finistère since 2012. Close support of Emmanuel Macron since 2016, will he stand for re-election?
The June 2022 legislative elections will be a turning point for political formation in government: possessing until then the parliamentary majority, the “centrist” bloc structured around Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party is campaigning to grab as many constituencies as possible. But with the union of the left led by the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the RN of Marine Le Pen who has never united so many voters, the competition is fierce. The 314 LREM deputies obtained in 2017 out of the 577 seats available in the Assembly were a feat that the party and its allies wish to repeat. Richard Ferrand, ex-socialist who was the first parliamentarian to rally Emmanuel Macron in 2016, is one of the architects of this legislative campaign. President of the National Assembly until the new vote on June 21 and deputy for the 6th constituency of Finistère since 2012, he is a pillar of the LREM camp, but above all a close support of the re-elected president. His campaign to run for a second term in Finistère has not yet been launched. In the same way, he has not yet decided on his desire to renew the experience of the perch. What would be his chances of doing so?
Deputy of the sixth constituency of Finistère since 2017, Richard Ferrand is not a novice of parliamentary campaigns. Already in 2012, he was elected deputy for the 6th constituency of Finistère under the banner of the PS during the five-year term of François Hollande. Already at that time, he was the general rapporteur for the Macron law in the National Assembly, which was finally passed in August 2015. Then, five years ago, he led the En Marche movement! in the race for deputation, in particular through negotiations around investitures. Known for being a unifier, he has notably brought together personalities like François Bayrou and Edouard Philippe, and has, in general, invested a lot in this five-year term. If he is therefore very committed to building the LREM parliamentary majority, he is not yet an official candidate in Finistère, the designation of LREM candidates (or allied parties) for the legislative elections taking longer than in 2017 A first salvo of nominations should however quickly be unveiled, with the handing over of the most coveted constituencies during the month of May. Can he be reappointed as an LREM deputy?
In 2017, with a score of 33.93% in the first round and 56.53% in the second round of the legislative elections, he had strengthened his local roots in a region where eight LREM deputies had won the eight constituencies. On April 5, Emmanuel Macron had also chosen Finistère for his fifth campaign trip, beginning his speech by quoting his “friend Ferrand”. However, this parliamentary success was closely linked to the popularity of Emmanuel Macron before his first steps at the Elysée: Finistère was the region that had elected him the best, with 29.45% of the votes in the first round, i.e. five more than the national average, and the second 77.33%. In 2022, the record is still exceeded: with 32.21% of the votes cast in the first round, it is three points gained compared to 2017, while he won in the second at 67.5% against Marine Le Pen who received only 22.67% of the vote.
However, parliamentary elections do not follow the same voting trends, since the “useful vote”, “flag effect” or “blocking vote” factors are less significant than during presidential elections. Furthermore, as revealed The worldthe LREM list is less successful in Finistère, Richard Ferrand having even been deprived of his seat as regional councilor in July 2021. The candidates who won the local polls have since “suffered many setbacks”, Richard Ferrand himself admitting same: “I am more an architect than a site manager”.
While his mandate as President of the Assembly ends on June 21, 2022, some believe that Richard Ferrand could join Matignon, a rumor which he defended himself in various interviews, recalling that it is a question “which does not arise pas” and which was “not asked” (comments made during his interview for Midi libre, April 27). For the one whose mandate in the Assembly will remain “the most beautiful of his career” (comments reported by The world on April 5), a re-election would be desirable. However, he has not yet clearly expressed this ambition: to the question of a new candidacy, he is content to answer: “The challenge is first of all that the government has a majority; when the time comes, we will see how things turn out.” As a reminder, the re-election of a President of the National Assembly is very rare: it took place only once with the mayor of Bordeaux Jacques Chaban-Delmas: elected to the presidency in 1958, he was re-elected in 1962, 1967 and 1968.
For Richard Ferrand, the structuring of the majority in the event of LREM’s victory would be above all that of a “common project”: in his interview for Midi Libre, he insists that all the candidates for deputy undertake to “support the presidential project and the government that will be appointed”, recalling that, if the “sensitivities” can live afterwards, “parliamentary efficiency” requires that there are not “too many internal structures”. As such, he brushes aside the differences that exist between LREM and its allies, the Modem and Horizons, explaining that this “enlargement” approach is common to them”. For him, the “friction that could exist” between Jean Castex, François Bayrou or Olivier Dussopt are “anecdotal”.
In an interview given to Free lunch on April 28, Richard Ferrand appealed to “women and men on the left” to join the LREM party for the legislative elections. Former socialist, the deputy of Finistère conquered by the formation of Emmanuel Macron from 2016, wanted to show that his “already vast” gathering, was “destined to expand”. Wanting to warn those who will “quickly get bogged down in extremist alliances” if they join LFI or the RN, he took up a rhetoric dear to Emmanuel Macron, that of “overcoming divisions around a common project”. He thus addressed all the “social democrats, socialists, ecologists, to tell them that they have their place in our majority to bring their sensitivity, their proposals, their priorities, their concerns”.
This appeal, launched in the midst of negotiations between the left-wing parties and LFI for an agreement, could tempt those who, in the socialist branch in particular, perceive this rapprochement as a betrayal or an erasure of their party. On May 4, in fact, the PS follows this movement of great union of the left by finding an agreement in principle with the Insoumis. This great transformation which is announced by the merger of the programs and the compromises necessary for the functioning of this “Popular Union” does not therefore please everyone. One thinks for example of the socialist mayor of Mans Stéphane Le Foll, who never ceased to tackle Olivier Faure’s initiative to lead the negotiations, and who, on the announcement of this agreement in the making, said ready to “lead the campaign” for the legislative elections of the dissidents of the PS. Or to former Socialist Prime Minister Barnard Cazeneuve who, on May 3, published a column on his Facebook account in which he explained that he would leave the PS in the event of an agreement with the radical left.