The various leaders of the New Popular Front parties immediately reacted to the appointment of Michel Barnier, a member of the Republicans, to the role of Prime Minister. The indignant messages are numerous.
“All that for that”, “I will vote for censure”, a “total mockery”… The nomination of Michel Barnier as Prime Minister, announced by the Élysée on Thursday 5 September after numerous consultations, has provoked the wrath of the New Popular Front.
One of the strongest voices in this camp, the leader of the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon, denounced an election that “was stolen” during a first speech. He assured that Emmanuel Macron “refuses to respect popular sovereignty and the choice resulting from the ballot boxes” while the New Popular Front obtained the greatest number of seats in the second round of the legislative elections on July 7.
The leader of La France Insoumise called for the “most powerful mobilisation possible” on 7 September to oppose this choice of Prime Minister.
Michel Barnier appointed Prime Minister
“A crisis of regime”
Former President of the Republic François Hollande called on the new head of government to “explain himself” before the Assembly. According to him, the National Rally (RN) has “given a form of discharge” for his appointment.
“There is a near certainty” that if Michel Barnier was able to be designated by the president, “it is because the RN, precisely the extreme right, has given a form of approval”, analyzed François Hollande, who was speaking to journalists at the Châlons-en-Champagne fair.
Olivier Faure, the leader of the socialists, sees the nomination of a member of the Republicans as proof of the entry into “a crisis of the regime”.
“In all democracies in the world, it is the coalition that comes out on top that is called upon to form a government. Never the party that lost the election. Creating this precedent would be dramatic and dangerous for the institutions themselves,” he added in a message on X.
The same tone was taken by Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of the Ecologists party. In a video shared on social media (then deleted) that can be summed up as “all that for that”, the politician called on New Popular Front voters not to “resign themselves”, once again showing her support for Lucie Castets, assuring that this is “not the end of her political role”.
“The president has been making eyes at the far right and, since it was necessary to obtain a non-censorship from the government, has been looking further and further to the right of the political spectrum,” she addressed to Emmanuel Macron.
“The bullshit is total”
Ian Brossat, a spokesman for the French Communist Party (PCF), has made known the position of his camp, the last member of the NFP quartet. Like the other representatives of this union of the left, the communist senator castigates this decision:
“Barnier as Prime Minister is not cohabitation. It’s shared accommodation. Same political line as Macron, yet massively rejected in the European and legislative elections. The mockery is total.”
Still on behalf of the PCF, national secretary Fabien Roussel promised to use “all means at (…) disposal to combat a policy which would turn its back on the interests of France, starting with the censorship of the government”.
Finally, on the side of the deputies associated with the New Popular Front, outside the major parties, François Ruffin promised censure. “Is Michel Barnier going to go back on retirement at 64? Re-establish the ISF? No, of course not: Macron chose him on these conditions. So we will censure him,” he said.
On the side of the entourage of the President of the Republic, the appointment of Michel Barnier is not seen as a continuity, but as the choice of a “political opponent of the President of the Republic”, who has “shown that he knows how to overcome partisan divisions and build rallies”.
