For
France’s Le Pen, it’s Barnier now, maybe Macron next
France’s
far-right leader has brought the government to its knees. Now, with the country
in political turmoil, she has the president in her sights.
To get
Marine Le Pen and her troops on board, Michel Barnier had in recent days
conceded to several far-right demands. |
December 4,
2024 4:00 am CET
By Victor
Goury-Laffont
PARIS —
Marine Le Pen has two big aims, her critics say: to cause chaos and bring down
Emmanuel Macron.
The dramatic
events of recent days, as the French political system has ripped itself apart
and brought the European Union’s second-largest country to one of the most
serious crisis points in its modern history, would suggest her opponents are
right.
Since
beleaguered Prime Minister Michel Barnier took office in September he has
arguably handed the far-right firebrand much of what she’s dreamed of for years
— institutional respect for her National Rally party, a seat at the top table,
and the opportunity to turn policy into law.
But none of
that has proved enough. She wants more.
So, barring
any last-minute surprises, Barnier and his government, having only been in
power for three months, will on Wednesday fall victim to a no-confidence vote
and earn the dubious distinction of serving the shortest term in the history of
the modern French republic, which was established in 1958.
The French
system works in two layers, with the government and prime minister controlling
domestic day-to-day affairs and the president having a powerful, overarching
role. This is the prize Le Pen hankers after — she’s run unsuccessfully for it
on three occasions and plans to take another shot in 2027.
The
no-confidence vote has arisen over the government’s failure to convince Le Pen
to back a budget that would have injected €60 billion into state coffers
through tax hikes and spending cuts to address France’s spiraling deficit.
Despite a series of concessions to address her concerns, Barnier’s team
believes she repeatedly moved the goalposts.
Her interest
was to making French politics more chaotic, they think.
Leaving
France without a government would, after all, trigger a political crisis,
expose the country to financial turmoil and potentially pave the way for a new
prime minister who could be even less favorable to her party.
“Le Pen’s
conditions were constantly changing,” as they discussed the budget proposal,
said a conservative member of Barnier’s government, who was granted anonymity
because of the politically sensitive nature of the discussions. “Sunday, she
gave a 17th different version of what her conditions were. The prime minister
responded Monday, and once again, that wasn’t enough.”
In an
interview with newspaper La Tribune published Saturday, Le Pen seemed to
indicate that it would take only a concession on drug prices or pensions for
her to give Barnier a second chance. One day later, she demanded both.
“When you
see that such consequential efforts were made but were deemed insufficient, you
have to wonder if all that wasn’t just a pretense, and that their mind was
already made up for another reason,” the cabinet member said.
Which brings
us to Macron.
Le Pen’s
real motivation, some believe, is to force the president himself — the centrist
embodiment of everything she abhors — to step down.
So far she’s
stopped short of formally calling for him to quit, but has far from dismissed
the idea.
“Our
constitution is clear,” she said on Monday. “In the event of a serious
political crisis, the president of the republic has three options. Reshuffle
[of the government], dissolution [of the government] or resignation [himself].”
So with the
first two options already exhausted, it’s clear what she sees as the ultimate
outcome.
But not so
fast, Macron said on Tuesday evening. “I was elected twice by the French
people,” he said. “I am extremely proud of this, and I will honor their trust
with all my energy until the very last second of my term to serve the country.”
Power base
Should
Macron step down, it would be a truly seismic moment for France, where
presidential elections aren’t due for another two and a half years and no
president in the modern republic has resigned apart from Charles de Gaulle
after the violent 1968 riots.
Such a
dramatic move would resonate with much of Le Pen’s National Rally’s base
however. A poll released earlier this week by the conservative outlet CNews
showed that 62 percent of respondents believed the French president should
resign if Barnier is ousted. Among National Rally voters, that figure climbed
to 87 percent.
“Our voters
are upset with the government’s attitude,” said a National Rally
parliamentarian. “People don’t want us to censure Michel Barnier, they want us
to censure Emmanuel Macron.”
And that
assessment goes beyond the National Rally. Left-wing lawmakers, who after
beating Macron in his July election form the largest bloc in parliament, have
been calling on the President to resign ever since he ignored them and tapped
the center-right Barnier in September instead.
On the
right, at least one voice has started calling for Macron to throw in the towel.
Jean-François Copé, a respected French conservative voice who initially pushed
his party, Les Républicains, to work with Macron, said last week that a new
presidential election was “the only solution” to the current crisis.
While
Macron’s exit wouldn’t resolve the parliamentary gridlock — the French lower
house, the National Assembly, is divided into into three roughly equal blocs,
left wing, right of center and far right, which refuse to cooperate — it would,
it’s supporters argue, provide a democratic reset and allow the new president
to start fresh.
More to the
point, as far as Le Pen is concerned, it might give her the greatest
opportunity of her career.
Sarah
Paillou contributed to this report.
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