Macron pulls a trump
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I think that's the main issue, that this reeks more of Macron's refusal to work with the left than right. That he's holding onto power because he lost in a way he didn't think could happen.
So Macron should be the first French President to resign despite not losing a Presidential election or reaching the end of his term?
This is absolutely him leveraging the power he still has to hold on to power.
Hang on - if the complaint is that Barnier's party came in fourth, then does that mean they want Le Pen's party to have the PM?
The RN came in first among parties, after all.
(If you count by parties, I think Barnier's party actually came in 5th.)
Macron appointed Barnier already.
He thinks he can create a coalition despite the left outnumbering him.
Yes, I know.
And the complaint in that tweet was that it was from the party that got the 4th highest number of seats.
That implies that it should have been the party who won the most seats.
Except that is Le Pen's party.
So clearly this person doesn't really believe that "the number of seats their party won" should be the deciding factor.
Because obviously he can.
The NPF didn't assemble a majority.
Macron can clearly arrange a coalition that outnumbers them, mathematically.
Can he do it in terms of actually getting people to agree not to vote no-confidence?
Very uncertain.
The RN has said they won't decide to support Barnier without seeing his policy document.
Right now, it looks like Barnier has all of Ensemble and his Republicans, which is a coalition of 181 - one more than the NPF, but also clearly not a majority.
Well short, in fact. Even with all the "Others", they wouldn't be safe.
So either the RN has to have some people support Barnier or some of the NPF does.
Now, there are all sort of weird rules about no-confidence votes where the parties have to vote on the SAME no confidence vote to kick Barnier out.
Otherwise, he can survive until he actually calls a budget vote or something else that is an automatic no-confidence vote.
It's clearly a mess, and I have no idea how it will play out.
Macron has ended up with a hot mess that forced him to swing into a further right leaning coalition.
He can get away with it but the question really is will he get away with it.
NFP received the most seats and traditionally should have been given the PM. Going to Barnier just bolsters the far right.
I wonder if this would ever happen:
NFP and the far-right National Rally (RN) together have a majority and could oust the prime minister through a no-confidence vote should they decide to collaborate.
Except that the situation is that there three major blocs and each has about 1/3.
Two of those said that if the NFP got the PM, they would absolutely combine forces for a vote of no confidence.
Could Macron have maybe put more pressure on the Ensemble to not do that?
Probably. I suspect so. But we don't actually know.
Possibly.
Le Pen has implicitly threatened that.
If the policy document isn't to her liking, the RN is going to help throw Barnier out.
Since the NFP seems to have committed to voting no confidence no matter what, Le Pen has more leverage right now.
No two of the three blocks seems to want to work together.
Protests, impeachment and who knows what now.
NFP still has the largest block of seats by party, which makes it all just look worse.
Which isn't surprising.
Some would argue that some of the parties should abandon their blocs and make a new one that can govern.
Indeed, one idea behind a governmental set up like this is that it should force compromise and coalition building.
All of which is appropriate, in that there are tools to try and solve the gridlock and those tools are being used.
How does it make it look worse?
No block is within 100 seats of being able to take control, so there is gridlock.
The odds of there NOT being gridlock in such a situation are very low.
Now, why can the NFP not get anyone to agree to some kind of coalition for stability?
Is that their fault? Is it Macron's fault? Is it some other part of the centrist coalition bloc's fault?
I don't know enough about the details of French politics to know.
You would HOPE that "we need to team up to keep the RN out" would have held, as it did for the election itself.
It clearly hasn't.
As much as you are a rules based thinker, you also know that democracy relies on unwritten conventions.
The convention was that the largest party gets the PM and that the president doesn't stall or refuse to select a PM.
Its not going to be a stable government, a few months of an extreme right leader leading to another election and we see what happens.
And the convention is also that that the President doesn't pick someone who will be voted out on the first vote, which is what both other blocs promised to do.
Because no one had enough seats.
There was an offer of a centrist coalition on the table, ditch the furthest left and the furthest right parties.
They didn't go for it.
There are lots of people who said that was Macron's plan when he called the election.
Let the right wing win, show they can't run the government, and then the centrists win the presidency when the election comes up.
He did nothing to help the coordinated "keep the RN out" strategy, which is what some of those with this theory point to.
Its a messed up system, PM is really bit of shit job in France and they get fired fairly often it seems by the president. Even so, blocking this far right coalition was supposed to be the reason Macron called the election and he had a chance to keep it down. This choice doesn't seem to any more stable.
Except that now he doesn't come off as centrist. Sounds like there will be another election fairly soon.
Almost all parlimentary systems have a no-confidence structure.
This can happen in any of them.
If the Conservatives won a minority but one where the NDP and Liberals could vote them out immediately, the Governor General would have a decision to make.
Yes, the political culture here is that the Cons would be given first shot to make the government and it would be expected that the Libs and NDP would not immediately vote them out.
But say the Cons had a more Bernier like figure who had taken over.
If the NDP and Libs went to the GG and said "We are both telling you that if he is named prime minister we will immediately vote no confidence" what is the GG to do?
Now, yes, the dynamics are different in that Macron is President and has different power incentives than the GG.
I also don't think he is acting in good faith.
But unless the threat from Ensemble and RN is something he made up (which it doesn't appear to be or they would have contradicted him about it) then he does have to consider that the NFP can't form a government when picking a PM.
I don't think "blocking the Far Right" was how he justified calling the election.
He called it after the far right won and had momentum.
If he had simply not called one, the far right was already contained.
It's more stable than instantly being voted out (since the RN has said they will wait until they see his proposals).
But the moment he called the snap election people thought the situation would be less stable.
It's one of the reasons people were so mad at him for calling it.
I don't know enough about how this is all viewed in France to say one way or the other.
Most people predicted that after the first round results.
Some predicted it immediately after Macron called the snap election, figuring the only way there wouldn't be another would be if the RN won a clear majority.
Sounds like a reasonable assessment.
Still, Macron made a choice that the public will remember, he refused to work with the left wing and instead chose the extreme right.
Considering the total wackjobs to the left and the right, I say do your best Macron. He isn't doing anything illegal, he isn't staging a coup, he isn't trying to dig up votes that don't exist, only a total reality denier would compare him to Trump
And the sort of reality denial type person who if Macron were playing the exact same games to keep the hard right out would be cheering him on.
And we both know by reality denial, I am not talking about you Valcazar.
198 seats for the center-right/right coalition, 180 for the hard lefts.
Who here was comparing someone to Trump because he didn't want to appoint someone from the largest party.
Looks like he did. Coalitions count as parties and anyone who says otherwise is just a lying opportunist who would agree to it if it suited their purposes.
