France will live five years of permanent political anger. The motion of censure against the Government presented by the left failed unappealable yesterday – it obtained 146 votes, very far from the 289 necessary to move forward – but the unusual nature of the maneuver, when the Executive has barely begun to move, and the The tone of the debate in the National Assembly anticipates a very angry legislature that could become an ordeal for the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, and for the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron.
The last motion of censure that was successful in France was in 1962, against the government of George Pompidou, during the presidency of Charles de Gaulle. The four groups in the left-wing coalition – the French Unsubmissive (LFI), socialists, environmentalists and communists – knew very well, this time, that they would not topple Borne’s cabinet. Their intention was to show that they are the real opposition and force the other groups to get wet.
The person in charge of defending the motion of censure was the LFI deputy Mathilde Panot, who used a very aggressive verb, bordering on insult. Panot called Borne a “democratic anomaly” and lacking political and parliamentary legitimacy. She reproached him for having continued in office despite the fact that the president’s supporters lost the absolute majority and for not having submitted to a confidence vote last week, when she presented her program.
The prime minister replied energetically to Panot and reminded him that the left-wing coalition lost both the presidential and legislative elections. Borne considered the motion of censure an irresponsibility that diverts attention from priorities such as measures to preserve purchasing power and to strengthen the health system in the face of a new wave of covid.
The National Regrouping (RN, extreme right), once again chose an institutional attitude, to differentiate itself from the left. His young deputy Alexandre Loubet, impeccably dressed, maintained that “we are already going through a social, economic and security crisis; We don’t need a regime crisis.” Thus he argued his vote against the motion. That does not imply that, in the future, RN wants to make life impossible for the Government.
The president of the Renaissance group (formerly La República en Marcha), Macron’s party, Aurore Bergé, accused the left of “denying reality”, by not accepting its defeat at the polls, and of “killing democracy”.
Michèle Tabarot, of The Republicans (LR, right)), harshly criticized Macron and the government, asking them to “break with arrogance and contempt”, but said that her group will never contribute “to the sterile blockade” nor will it vote with the extreme left a motion of censure.
The victory for the Government does not mean that placid times will come. During the debate an uncomfortable issue came up for Macron that can bring a tail: the revelations about his intervention, when he was François Hollande’s Minister of Economy, between 2014 and 2016, to favor the implementation of the Uber platform in France.
