There were heady days for the Left this summer when snap elections made the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) the largest force in the National Assembly. But as fall descends, France is getting quite a different kind of government. Cobbled together under a figure from the National Assembly’s fifth-biggest caucus, this staunchly conservative cabinet is characteristic of President Emmanuel Macron’s right-wing slide.
Finalized on Saturday, the new government concludes two weeks of coalition negotiations between Macronist MPs and the new prime minister Michel Barnier’s right-wing Les Républicains party. While talks had appeared to break down in recent days over personnel and policy specifics, the need to bind together soon won out.
A Barnier government offers the Républicains a chance to return to power after twelve years on the sidelines, even if he’s dependent on their Macronist ex-adversaries. Once a dominant force in France’s now-defunct two-party system, the conservative Républicains had not been in national government since the end of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency in 2012. Since Macron’s election in 2017, they have hemorrhaged supporters and officials to both the president and the far right. Ironically, their return to power comes at a point when the party is a shell of its former self in the National Assembly, with a caucus of merely forty-seven MPs.
“We don’t come from the same place and we won’t be going to the same place in 2027,” Barnier said on Sunday, referring both to the rival backgrounds of his new cabinet and their likely parting of ways ahead of presidential elections in three years’ time. “But what’s crucial to know is that we have a national and collective emergency on our hands.”
For Macron, who…
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Auteur: Harrison Stetler
