A political crisis has begun and Emmanuel Macron's second term of office is already facing gridlock. The sky fell in on the presidential camp on Sunday when the final results of the legislative elections dropped. Ensemble, the coalition of those backing the head of state, has won 245 of the 577 seats in the new National Assembly in the French Parliament. This is far – very far – from the large outright majority that French voters had given him in 2017 and which he had urged voters to give him for the next five years too.
The election of June 19th 2022 will remain lodged in the annals of the Fifth Republic. Never, since the electoral timetable was changed in 2002 to make legislative elections immediately follow the presidential vote, has a president been repudiated with such force in a parliamentary election. Having been re-elected just two months ago as president, Emmanuel Macron now has no working majority in the National Assembly at the start of his second term of office. His own party La République en Marche (LREM - now called Renaissance) lost almost half its seats on Sunday. It held 314 in June 2017 and now has around 160.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
“This situation constitutes a risk for our country,” prime minister Élisabeth Borne declared melodramatically on Sunday evening. “It's a long way from what we were hoping for,” conceded Gabriel Attal, the public accounts minister and former government spokesperson on TF1 television news. “The French people have clearly not given us a majority.” The government's news spokesperson, Olivia Grégoire, also resorted to understatement to describe her reaction. “We've known better evenings,” she told France 2 television. “It's a disappointing first place, but it is first place.”
Amid this disappointment the presidential camp lost some of its leading lights. Three members of the government are going to have to quit their job after being defeated on Sunday. Amélie de Montchalin, minister for ecological transition and territorial solidarity, was beaten by the socialist candidate Jérôme Guedj in the Essonne département or county south of Paris. Health minister Brigitte Bourguignon lost to a candidate from the far-right Rassemblement national (RN) in the Pas-de-Calais in the north of the country and Justine Benin, the minister for the sea, foundered in her constituency in Guadeloupe against a leftwing candidate.
On top of these ministerial losses, two particular results symbolised the rout of the Macron movement on Sunday evening. One was the defeat of Richard Ferrand, the president of the National Assembly in the last Parliament, and the other was that of Christophe Castaner, a former interior minister and, until now, president of the LREM group of MPs at the Assembly. Both were key figures in the ruling majority and among the most loyal of Macron loyalists, and both were beaten by candidates from the broad left and environmental alliance NUPES (the New Popular Ecological and Social Union).
So on the eve of what is likely to be an explosive Parliament, Emmanuel Macron has lost his two main representatives in the National Assembly. Other influential MPs, such as the Parliamentary administrator or 'questeur' Florian Bachelier who lost his seat in Brittany, the president of the group of MPs representing Macron's centrist allies MoDem, Patrick Mignola, and the Assembly's general rapporteur for the budget Laurent Saint-Martin were also swept aside by the Left. In addition the Paris MP Pierre-Yves Bournazel, who is close to Macron's former prime minister Édouard Philippe, and who was due to take over the presidency of MPs representing the latter's Horizon party, lost his seat to NUPES candidate Aymeric Caron.
Attention turns to Les Républicains but....
On Sunday evening Emmanuel Macron's future prospects looked to be bogged down in an unprecedented political and institutional quagmire. He is 44 MPs short of an overall majority. This represents a chasm that no one within the ruling party had envisaged on the eve of the poll. So, what are the options for the government? Without an outright majority this presidency's plans have collapsed like a house of cards. The Assembly was supposed to be passing its traditional vote of confidence in the government at the start of July, then voting for its laws on consumer spending and all the promises made by Macron as a candidate, including pension reforms.
In her comments on Sunday evening Élisabeth Borne referred to this uncertain future. “From tomorrow we will work to build a majority in favour of action,” promised the prime minster. “The various persuasions should come together and good compromises should be constructed in order to act in the service of France,” she continued, calling for a “spirit of responsibility” from the different political groups. She concluded her brief speech with a remark whose ambitions were at stark odds with the mood of the evening: “I have trust in our country … We have everything we need to succeed and it is together that we will manage to do so.”
The political gaze now turns towards the rightwing Les Républicains (LR) party who have won 64 seats in the Assembly. From a strictly political point of view the hypothesis of a deal between the government and LR makes sense. Having already siphoned off some of its politicians, its ideas and its voters from the rightwing LR, Emmanuel Macron could seal a “coalition pact” with what remains of Nicolas Sarkozy's old party. The former president is, incidentally, strongly in favour of this option. This would require some concessions, such as the appointment of a prime minister from the LR or the promise to carry out pension reform.
But though it's a seductive theory, such a move currently seems highly improbable. Those sections of the LR party which survived the shock of its dismal score in April's presidential elections – its candidate Valérie Pécresse received just 4.8% of the vote – built their legislative campaign almost entirely on a rejection of Emmanuel Macron and on a desire to oppose his politics. “We're in opposition and we'll remain in opposition to Emmanuel Macron,” LR president Christian Jacob insisted on Sunday evening.
In private, several LR politicians also speak of their strategic reticence to the idea of a “coalition pact”, an idea that is backed in particular by former party president Jean-François Copé. Given that under the rules Emmanuel Macron cannot stand for the presidency again in 2027, some point out that joining a Macronista boat that is in difficulty would be a short-term choice. They say it could undermine the LR's chances of looking like an electoral alternative in five years. The party's senior figures are due to hold a meeting of its strategy committee this Monday in what is set to be a crucial gathering.
Rather than having a formal agreement with another party, the government could try to rebuild a working majority on its own, MP by MP. There are some MPs in LR who might respond to Élisabeth Borne's appeal to “come together”. On the Left, too, the government could try to tempt some socialist MPs who are opposed to NUPES. Finally, there are MPs from the overseas départements and territories who could potentially join the government's side. Strategists in the Élysée will have been spending the night poring over the names and possibilities, hoping that they can reach the magic number of 289 required for a majority in the Assembly.
This approach is also full of uncertainty, but does the government have a better option? One other possibility is to build a majority parliamentary bill by parliamentary bill, vote by vote. On proposed legislation that is technical in nature or which has a broad consensus that is a likely option. But for flagship legislation or finance bills, the one-off support of several dozen opposition MPs seems hard to imagine.
The Borne legacy: failure and denial
On Sunday evening the language used by the government and ruling party made it clear what the Macronista strategy will be: put pressure on those opposition forces who are the closest, with the LR first in line, by appealing to the “higher interests” of the nation. “There is no alternative to this rallying together,” said Élisabeth Borne on Sunday, with shades of the famous formula employed by Margaret Thatcher, There IS No Alternative, known as TINA. “The French people call upon us to rally together for the country,” she declared.
Meanwhile those who hoped that the prime minister would find a response that matched the importance of the political explosion we have just witnessed were left sorely disappointed. Instead, the head of the government seemed to be in denial. “For several weeks the government has been at work and taking measures that are necessary to protect each and every one. Tomorrow we shall increase and speed up our actions in the service of all French people,” she said. Despite the electoral wall into which the ruling majority has just smashed, Élisabeth Borne thus seems determined to plough on regardless.
It is by no means certain that the head of state, though, shares his current prime minister's eagerness for continuity. In charge of running what was in effect a non-campaign for the legislative elections, Élisabeth Borne failed. She herself almost did not make it on Sunday night; though she was standing in a constituency in Calvados in Normandy which was very winnable, she only just won with a narrow 52.5% of the vote against a 22-year-old candidate from La France Insoumise, the radical left party that was the driving force behind the NUPES alliance. Now that he has been forced to begin a new phase in his presidency, Emmanuel Macron could take the opportunity of the expected reshuffle to install a new prime minister.
To think that, just a few short weeks ago, the head of state was still dreaming that he would obtain an overall majority in the National Assembly for his own party without even needing the support of his partners in Horizons and Modem. These two parties and their respective heads – his first prime minister Édouard Philippe and veteran centrist François Bayrou – are now an absolute necessity but still not sufficient to give the president a majority. Lacking popular support, the head of state must now find new Parliamentary supporters or face seeing his second term dead in the water. The task is so great that already there is talk that the National Assembly might have to be dissolved and for fresh elections to take place.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter