On Friday, November 15, two close advisors to Marine Le Pen were received at Matignon for breakfast. There was Renaud Labaye, essential secretary general of the National Rally group in the Assembly, flanked by Ambroise de Rancourt, director of the frontist leader's cabinet. It was he who instigated the meeting through François Bolard, head of Michel Barnier's budgetary department. The sovereignist enarch has known him for several years. As for Renaud Labaye, his relations are fluid with the Prime Minister's parliamentary affairs officer, Matthieu Labbé, whom the Saint-Cyrian frequented when he worked at Bercy.
The exchange was therefore courteous but frank. The Lepenist emissaries relayed the irritation rising in their ranks. The examination of the finance laws for 2025 has entered its final stretch and the RN considers itself abandoned by this government. Marine Le Pen has, at this time, still not been contacted by Michel Barnier's teams. Whether it is the “red lines” enacted on October 1 by the elected representative of Pas-de-Calais or proposals included in the “counter-budget” of the party to the flame, the executive has paid little attention to it until now. “They are following a very infantilizing logic,” complains a nationalist strategist. The meeting on November 15 unblocked the one scheduled for tomorrow between the Savoyard and his first opponent – posted, for the moment, and that's the dilemma.
Government censorship: Marine Le Pen increases pressure on Michel Barnier
Their tête-à-tête (to which Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the « Mr. Economy” of the populist party) will it change the air? For two weeks, the National Rally has been threatening more and more loudly to overthrow the Barnier government. It will have at least three opportunities between now and winter: the final votes on the finance bill, the Social Security financing bill and the end of management law for 2024. Each time, the The left will definitely table a motion of censure. If it votes in full, the contribution of 125 votes from the RN will be enough to reach the majority.
This music has been amplified since the damning requisitions of the Paris prosecutor's office in the trial of the FN's European parliamentary assistants. The far-right movement is accused of having embezzled nearly 5 million euros from taxpayers to pay its permanent staff. Marine Le Pen will know at the beginning of 2025 if she is sentenced, in first instance, to a sentence of ineligibility accompanied by provisional execution. In other words, immediate.
The three-time presidential candidate and Jordan Bardella may be uncorrelated, but these two deadlines are closely linked. “One news must chase another,” comments a friend of Marine Le Pen. An advisor to the party leader, although against censorship, recognizes that a fall of the government at the end of the budgetary debates could “relegate the trial to second place”. Judicial pressure is added to that, more fundamental, of the electorate. From the end of October, several members of the frontist group at the Palais-Bourbon expressed their concern: the strategy of keeping the government “under surveillance”, to contrast with La France insoumise and obtain political gains, is less and less understood by the base.
Someone like Philippe Lottiaux, deputy for the Saint-Tropez (Var) constituency, quickly noticed the phenomenon. “Initially, I was in favor of not censoring, the elected official recently explained, but if we have a budget that hits communities, overtaxes electricity, increases our contribution to the European Union… at some point, that doesn't work. Disagreeing without showing it, I can no longer sell it on the ground. »
Jordan Bardella's short memoirs
The phenomenon is verified in the polls. According to the survey carried out by Ipsos for La Tribune Sunday on the subject, 67% of RN supporters want a motion of censure to be adopted in the National Assembly. The same institute noted, in its barometer of November 9, a significant increase in the unpopularity of Michel Barnier within the Marinist base. This explains the zeal of its representatives in the media or on social networks.
However, we must scrutinize the choice of words: from Sébastien Chenu to Laure Lavalette, everyone handles equivocation. The tenant of Matignon takes “the way” or “the path” censorship, they explain, thus leaving the door to negotiations open. When he meets Arnaud Danjean, Michel Barnier's right-hand man, on board the Thalys bringing them back from Brussels around ten days ago, Jordan Bardella lowers the temperature: “Some people make boxes of it…”
This is because the MEP, virulent opponent that he is, also seeks to seduce a France concerned with the stability of institutions and, above all, of markets. Marine Le Pen's entourage raises several bells and whistles, between the anti-system radicalism of Philippe Olivier, her brother-in-law, and the temperance of François Durvye, an investor close to business circles and the reactionary billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin – which finances the Pericles project, a device aimed at promoting the union of the liberal and nationalist rights and, ultimately, their accession to power.
“It's too early to censor, judges an oil from the Lepéniste network. If we end up with Lucie Castets or her little brother in Matignon, the French will blame Marine for eternity. You have to be a legislator, negotiate three or four things with Bercy… or even outside Bercy. » Contacts take place in particular with the Ministry of the Interior, where frontist expectations in terms of immigration are all the more easily respected as they are widely shared by Bruno Retailleau.
The problem is that its first texts will not arrive in Parliament before January or February. Hence the temptation of some, around the head of the RN deputies, to draw quickly, knowing that Emmanuel Macron will not be able to dissolve the lower house. And, also that a failure of the Barnier experiment could reflect on a weakened head of state. As Marine Le Pen risks being because of her legal calendar…
