A unanimity in a large part of the bases of the National Assembly that is surprising. After the victory this Sunday night of Martine Froger, a dissident socialist, against Bénédicte Taurine, outgoing LFI-Nupes deputy in partial legislative elections, a large part of the political body greeted her arrival in the National Assembly.
“It seems that an anti-Nupes republican front is taking shape,” Jean-Pierre Raffarin, former prime minister of Jacques Chirac and now a supporter of Emmanuel Macron, wrote on his Twitter account.
“A Victory for the Republic”
If the macronie was jubilant at the defeat of the rebels, from Olivier Dussopt to Stéphane Séjourné via Clément Beaune, congratulations also erupted in the LR and RN camps. Julien Odoul, a close friend of Marine Le Pen, sees it as “a victory for the Republic”, as do several right-wing deputies.
What to see then for some the return of the Republican front. This expression, which has flourished in recent decades, designates the rally during an election of the entire political class against the RN candidate.
The second round of the 2002 presidential elections, where all the forces had called to vote in favor of Jacques Chirac against Jean-Marie Le Pen, is one of the most compelling examples of this.
Left-wing voters who moved to elect Macron
But in recent years, this phenomenon has faded, until the legislative elections last June. On the afternoon of the first round, given a score lower than expected and the multiplication of the triangular, the government did not call to vote in favor of the Nupes against the RN.
Olivia Grégoire, the then government spokeswoman, referred to “local issues” and not “a national debate” and refused to give voting instructions. Elisabeth Borne turns “the extremes” back to back, before finally calling “voiceless” to go to the “National Front”.
While distinguishing “a candidate who respects Republican values” and “those who insult our police.”
“Macronista’s memory is short. That night, the executive forgets that it is because the left-wing voters voted en masse against Marine Le Pen that the president won last April,” deciphers the sociologist Antoine Bristielle.
LFI not in the “republican arc”
During their meeting between the two rounds, Emmanuel Macron had also multiplied the nods to the left, in particular by taking up the concept of “ecological planning” dear to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. On the night of his re-election, the president had once again mentioned the “respect for difference” of the voters “who have spoken in recent weeks.”
Once the new Assembly was installed, the executive once again raised its voice against La France insoumise. Elisabeth Borne thus excludes the rebel deputies from the “republican arc”.
The expression is convenient: imported from Italy in the 1960s to distinguish between parties loyal to the Constitution and parties of the extreme right, according to the historian Mathias Bernard in the columns of The crossallows the executive to draw a kind of double border between the National Rally on the one hand and La France insoumise on the other.
“An equal sign between the extreme right and the set of Nupes”
The notion of the Republican arc also has the advantage of putting some pressure on elected officials considered moderates by Macronists. In the sights: socialists, environmentalists and communists.
“The Republican front, whether it works or not, has always been against RN. There now we put an equal sign between the extreme right and the group of Nupes when saying that it is a threat to the Republic ”, laments the politician. scientist and journalist Fabien Escalona, author of A Breathless Republic.
The pension reform has barely eased the tension. Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior thus accused La France insoumise of “seeking to install chaos”.
Rebels accused of wanting to delegitimize “our institutions”
The Minister of the Interior again denounced this Sunday in the columns of the JDD the “intellectual terrorism” of the extreme left, accusing Jean-Luc Mélenchon of wanting a “revolution”.
At the end of March, Emmanuel Macron for his part estimated that the rebels want to “delegitimize the reasonable order, our institutions, their tools.”
In the midst of a political crisis and a few days after an eleventh day of mobilization against the pension reform, the government, determined to go all the way, seeks to marginalize the Nupes. At the risk of burning your fingers.
“This strategy, which is understandable at the moment, could turn against Renaissance in 2027. How do you explain to voters that it is better to support the left than Marine Le Pen when you have been saying the opposite for 5 years? I don’t have an answer,” says Bruno Cautrès, a CNRS researcher.
“This election shows above all that excess and radicalism do not pay and do not unite”, estimated for his part the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt.
Source: BFM TV
