🇫🇷Bayrou Besieged, Le Pen on the Line: France’s Censure Crisis Unites Left and Right
François Bayrou’s reform conclave collapses, a far-left and far-right censure motion threatens his government, all while Marine Le Pen faces political exile, party turmoil, and Trump’s toxic embrace.
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This week
🙅 Bayrou’s conclave fails, triggers censure motion
❌Ciotti tries and fails to abolish immediate ineligibility
🛑Marine Le Pen rejects Trumps support
⬆️François Ruffin (re-)launches new party Debout!
🙅 Bayrou’s conclave fails, triggers censure motion
Right, on to the big news: Prime Minister François Bayrou had recently escaped a previous motion of censure through the fact that he had shown himself open to ‘improving’ on the retirement reforms, and had launched a “conclave” for this.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard to reconcile two binary positions that either maintain the increase in the retirement age for economic reasons or absolutely do not.
So, having survived censure motions this year purely on the basis that left-wing parties hoped he would potentially give in to their position, and with the conclave failing as expected, Bayrou is now in trouble (and so is the French economy)
Immediately after the conclave ended, and Bayrou refused to allow deputies to propose changes to the reform, it was announced by the Parti Socialiste, this Tuesday 24 June, that they would table a motion of censure against the Bayrou government.
Now, immediately you know that the Communists, La France Insoumise, the Ecologists and the Socialiste Party will come forward and support this, which would bring you a maximum of 192 votes for the censure.
However, you need 289 deputies for this to succeed.
Well, on the right of the hemicycle, you will find the 16 deputies of Eric Ciotti’s “Union of the Right”, and the 123 deputies of the Rassemblement National, which brings you to 139 deputies who would happily jump in.
However, there’s one sticker for the far-right: Marine Le Pen, if this triggers new legislative elections, then Marine Le Pen loses her seat, cannot run again, and becomes a political bystander in the same vein as Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
This *could* theoretically damage their brand, their electoral chances, and thrust Jordan Bardella into a leadership position that he may not be ready for, which many in his party still think he may be too inexperienced for, and which could put him in direct conflict with Marine Le Pen herself.
However, counterpoint: even if they lose Marine Le Pen, an Elabe poll from 5 June gave the RN coalition a +4% increase compared to last year’s legislative election results.
Meanwhile, polls indicate that Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition, led by Gabriel Attal (Renaissance), Édouard Philippe (Horizons), and Prime Minister François Bayrou (MoDem), has lost around 5% support over the same period.
This is likely the impact of not having a unified leadership, the impact of leading an unstable government coalition, and the impact of being in a position of power for so long in modern politics.
So it's not the worst deal for Jordan Bardella.
If you then add the far-left-to-centre-left and the far-right votes together, then even with a few abstentions from left-wingers who would baulk at the idea of working with the far-right, you easily clear the 289 votes required for a censure motion.
But then what happens next?
The reality is that neither the left bloc, which is currently at war with itself over whether to get rid of Mélenchon or not, nor the far-right, which is about to lose its leader, will be able to form a government on their own.
They will, in any case, have to find a coalition that includes members of the current centrist / centre-right political coalition to work with them. However, the left may be motivated by the fact that they would be rid of Marine Le Pen, potentially weakening the far-right.
And that’s not as easy as some would assume, which is what leads me to believe that we’re more likely to have a new legislative election this year than not, which we can talk about in this coming week.
❌Ciotti tries and fails to abolish immediate ineligibility
Moving on to the nationalist right: Eric Ciotti is a right-wing conservative famed for losing his mind, going out of his way to destroy his presidency of Les Républicains by locking everybody out of the building, and then posing on a balcony in a way that led to what felt like unlimited memes in the French political community.
Since this event, which was triggered by his attempts to force a “union of the right” with Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, he has been running the party called “Union of the Right for the Republic”, which has 16 deputies and one MEP.
This week saw him add to the shenanigans when he attempted to add a proposal to abolish the immediate execution of ineligibility sentences, following a series of right and far-right politicians, like Marine Le Pen and Francois Fillon, who have received bans from public life due to corruption and financial embezzlement.
For obvious reasons, Ciotti’s proposed amendment was opposed by the left-wing and centrist blocs, who denounced a law that was exclusively tailored to Marine Le Pen and intended to prevent her from being banned from public office while her appeal is ongoing.
This is, in part, due to the fact that Marine Le Pen can’t run for the presidency as it stands.
However, there’s another aspect to this: the ongoing instability of the French political scene, the fact that Bayrou’s government is not in great shape after the collapse of the retirement reform conclave, and the fact that we’re a week or so away from the constitutionally possible legislative elections.
🛑Marine Le Pen rejects Trumps support
Marine Le Pen has apparently rejected an offer of support from Donald Trump’s far-right American government.
Apparently, during a meeting in late May of this year, a delegation from the U.S State Department met with senior members from the Rassemblement National, with the understanding that they would be discussing explicit support from President Donald Trump and his political followers to not only overturn Le Pen’s conviction, but get her elected in 2027..
This would have concretised the support Le Pen has already received from Trump, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, and other far-right activists following her ban from political life, who screamed censorship over an open-and-shut case of financial embezzlement by the RN.
But who would let reality get in the way of lying.
However, undoubtedly understanding how toxic this situation would be, neither Marine La Pen nor Jordan Bardella attended the meeting, and those who did attend turned down the offer, led by Samuel Samson from the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour, due to harm it could cause the party.
⬆️François Ruffin (re-)launches new party Debout!
To finish up the week: François Ruffin, a former Mélenchoniste from La France Insoumise who was ejected from LFI party as part of a wide purge, has now relaunched his party.
Initially named Picardie Debout !, the party was initially registered in 2019 and put forward two candidates back in the 2022 legislative elections, where it was the only candidate re-elected.
With this renewed party, Ruffin will be attempting to position himself, like everybody, for the 2027 presidential elections. However, with Ruffin fighting for space with Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), Olivier Faure (PS), Raphael Glucksmann (PS), and Francois Hollande (PS), it’s fairly unlikely that he will be able to progress very far.
However, it does add a little more juice and politics to the efforts of the left to find a candidate they can all get behind, which for the Parti Socialiste, can probably be anyone so long as it’s not Mélenchon.
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It seems that one could make a reality show about politics called "Horizons of Cotti" x)