Lhe question, for several days, has come back like a cliché: will there be a government at Christmas? And, beyond that, will there be a budget? When the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, will decide to activate article 49.3 of the Constitution to adopt the finance bill without a vote – a hypothesis « probable »he declared –, will the opposition deputies, on the left and the extreme right, combine their voices to bring him down?
On a mathematical level, the equation is unstoppable: if the 124 deputies of the National Rally (RN) – 140 with the elected representatives of Eric Ciotti – support a motion tabled by the New Popular Front (192 deputies), as they have already done in the summer of 2023 when the pension reform is examined, the government will be overthrown. “It will fall between December 15 and 21”predicted the “rebellious” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Sunday November 17 on France 3, who dreams of an early presidential election, against a backdrop of institutional and political chaos.
Since the prosecution requested, on Wednesday November 13, a sentence of ineligibility with immediate execution against Marine Le Pen, tried during the trial of the assistants of MEPs from her party, the tone has hardened at the RN, who had given a form of prior blessing to the former Brexit negotiator during his appointment.
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When they learned, Friday evening, November 15, that the former presidential candidate had invited herself to TF1's “8 p.m.” show, a certain excitement spread over the ministerial offices, who believed that she was going to announce her intention to censor the government. She didn't do anything about it. But she considered that this indictment “revolting” amounted to asking “political death”rediscovering the old anti-system reflexes of his party, far from its desire for normalization and respectability.
Beyond the tactic (igniting a political counter-fire to make people forget her legal setbacks), Marine Le Pen must appease the frustration of her elected officials, who cannot claim any budgetary victory, when the leader of the deputies of the Les party Republicans (LR, Republican Right group), Laurent Wauquiez, was able to boast of having obtained a supposed increase in pensions. The RN deputies feel little considered by a Prime Minister who rejected their amendments, far from the summer considerations, when Michel Barnier was quick to call Marine Le Pen to tell her that his party should not be excluded from the arc Republican, contrary to what his Minister of the Economy, Antoine Armand, had just said.
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