Surreal atmosphere in the Parisian buildings on the Monday after the big bang of French politics. Marine Le Pen “parked” outside the gates of power, as one editorialist writes, and waits patiently. Inside, the feverish activity of those who – in the trenches with their calculators – are trying to avoid the collapse in a week.
But the ousted king, Emmanuel Macron, according to those close to him, is already projected towards the future, to cohabitation with Jordan Bardella: a scenario that only 20 days ago smacked of political fantasy and which was only made possible by the harakiri of the president himself. In one fell swoop, the so-called Jupiter, the new Napoleon, master of time, lost everything: the majority (halved deputies), the government, the solidity of the party, the electoral base.
He tries to save what can be saved, frantically, as he did by immediately appointing European Commissioner Thierry Breton, aware that in a few days he would be prevented from doing so. Between Macron and cohabitation with Jordan Bardella in government – Le Monde even evokes the image of the two sitting next to each other on July 14 for the National Day – only the barricades erected by the New Popular Front remain. The left coalition should be part of the Front Républicain, the anti-far-right group that has worked for decades in the Fifth Republic. And instead, to the cry of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, “not a vote for the Rassemblement National, we always and everywhere withdraw the candidates who came in third”, the spirit of the Front Populaire lives only in the momentum of the left.
On the right, among the Républicains orphans of president Eric Ciotti who went on to win with Le Pen, there is no question of standing up against the RN. In the Ensemble camp, that is, the government majority that has already become a minority, it is terribly difficult to pronounce those fateful words: “always and everywhere”. In fact, no one has said them yet, starting with Macron. Who, to the ministers gathered at the Elysée, reminded them that “we must not make mistakes”, that today “it is the extreme right that is about to reach the highest functions of the State, no one else”. It seems like a precise orientation, an invitation to clearly take a stand against. But then the indispensable words are missing: retreat “always and everywhere”.
The Macronian majority distrusts the left of La France Insoumise, without arriving at the equidistance between Le Pen and Mélenchon openly proclaimed by the Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, and the former prime minister, Edouard Philippe. Everything else is extremely fluid and confused, the Republican Front isn’t there yet and there are only a few hours left to bring it back to life.
Only with a common desistance – moderate right, centre, left – can it be avertedaccording to calculations, that the RN will reach the fateful quota of 289 seats necessary for an absolute majority. But Macron is also preparing cohabitation because he has understood that Marine Le Pen’s party already has one foot in Matignon, the palace that houses the prime minister, which is adjacent to the Italian embassy on rue de Varenne. If in recent days, on several occasions, Jordan Bardella had asked voters for “an absolute majority” to allow him and the RN to “change the country” (going so far as to say “without an absolute majority I will not become the president’s assistant”), today, with the RN that if it does not reach 289 seats will come very close – studies speak of 15 fewer seats, a quota of deputies that is not impossible to find, from time to time – Bardella’s attitude has changed: “We will have to see how the Assemblée Nationale organizes itself – said Sébastien Chenu, one of the leaders closest to Le Pen – but we will assume our responsibilities in front of the French”.
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