Baptized in the wake of the June 9 dissolution of the Assemblée Nationale, the fledgling left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) coalition is struggling to hide the growing divisions within its ranks. In recent weeks, the Socialists and the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI) have created multiple opportunities to tear into each other, all under the impotent gaze of the Greens. As the fall of Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government becomes increasingly plausible, the parties’ positions on what comes next appear increasingly irreconcilable.
If Barnier uses Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows a bill to be passed without a vote, the NFP will vote collectively – including former French president and current Socialist MP François Hollande – for a motion of no confidence, which could, with the votes of the far-right Rassemblement National, win a majority in the Assemblée Nationale.
For the Socialists, there’s no question of going back to the summer scenario and pushing Emmanuel Macron to appoint Lucie Castets, the NFP’s choice for prime minister, to head the government. On Sunday, November 24, on France Inter, Boris Vallaud, the president of the Socialist group in the Assemblée Nationale, threw a spanner in the works by wishing to “raise the question of non-censorship.” This was a way of reaching out to Macron’s parliamentary supporters, while the left remains a hundred votes short of a majority in the Assemblée.
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“The Socialists are organizing a new ‘common base’ with others in place of the Nouveau Front Populaire. Vallaud, [head of the Socialists Olivier] Faure [and Socialist mayor Karim] Bouamrane are reaching out to them,” LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said indignantly on X. “Vallaud proposes starting not from the NFP, but from the republican front. But the republican front is not a political program. We won’t be part of it!” said LFI MP Aurélien Taché, who acknowledged that the torch is burning between LFI and the Socialists. “We talk less, much less” than in the days of the Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale (NUPES, the forerunner of the NFP between 2022 and 2024).
‘Unnecessary provocation’
While promoting, without believing, Castets as the next prime minister, LFI seems more interested in pushing for an “early presidential election.” “Barnier is going to fall, one crisis is going to follow another, what else is there to unblock the situation?” asked Taché. This attitude ruffles the feathers of the Socialists, who are eager to govern. Socialist MP Emmanuel Grégoire accused his partners of “refusing power and the responsibilities that go with it.” He added that they “are failing in their duty to the electorate.”
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