The forces of the New Popular Front ended up finding – with difficulty – a name for Matignon last summer, that of Lucie Castets. And even if they warn together in The World, Thursday, November 21, that they will vote on a motion of censure if the Prime Minister uses 49.3 to have the budget adopted, the outcome, in the event of the fall of Michel Barnier's government, is much more vague.
Despite appearances and common victories during budgetary debates, the NFP has never been structured in the National Assembly. There is no intergroup, for example, although demanded by Cyrielle Châtelain, the president of the environmentalist deputies. The four party leaders of the PS, the Communist Party, the Ecologists and La France insoumise speak to each other every Thursday morning by video, with Lucie Castets, but are no longer aligned with the name of their former candidate.
After repeating, the hand on the heartfor weeks, that it will be “Lucie Castets or no one else”and this even in the face of the president's refusal to appoint her to Matignon, “the wind has turned”, recognizes one of the public services specialist's relatives to franceinfo. “We must settle the Lucie Castets optiondecides a leading socialist, if we replay the same match, we become powerless again, we have to reinvent something”. Even Marine Tondelier, number 1 of the Greens, is starting to turn the page.
According to a left-wing senator, the parties used Lucie Castets: “It’s their puppet, humanly, it’s ugly.” But in the entourage of the main person concerned we put things into perspective, we assure that she is ready to return if necessary – she also proposed it on Thursday to the party leaders, and to remain in support. This figure of civil society will participate, for example, in a meeting in Montreuil, Tuesday, November 26 in the evening with elected officials from the NFP. But a detail that is not one: she is looking for work – and has a serious lead.
If Michel Barnier were to fall, the left will not have a name to propose. Basically, they have the budget built together. But everyone is preparing on their own: environmentalists are reworking the NFP program a little. The head of the Socialists of the National Assembly Boris Vallaud is working, according to information from franceinfo, on five consensual points – old age, environment in particular – to be proposed to all Republican parties at the start of the year to break the deadlock . Nothing in common, since the PS, revived by the last legislative elections, now has ambitions, without LFI. And that LFI is preparing alone, for its part, for an early presidential election. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is betting on a dismissal or resignation of Emmanuel Macron. It is therefore not the post-Barnier period that they are preparing, but the post-Barnier era: the conquest of the Élysée.
