The crisis did not spare the presidential party, shaken for several weeks by internal turmoil. While Emmanuel Macron tries to prepare "the world after" the coronavirus, by receiving employers, unions and political leaders, his rear base is crumbling.
Emmanuel Macron has launched all-out consultations, political, bosses, trade unionists, to prepare for the end of the Coronavirus crisis. But there is, in the device, a part which will fail him and complicate the reconquest.
Yes, and this piece, this cog, is La République en Marche. It may seem strange, because it is his party, it is the movement that bears his initials, the instrument of his conquest of power and the armed wing of his politics. And yet, everything has been going wrong for a while.
This is primarily due to the youth of the movement: from the start, deputies, completely novices, were discouraged. They believed they had power, the naive, when they were only one among hundreds of parliamentarians. They thought they were making the law when they had to make the markets. First disappointments.
And so there have been others?
Yes, releases here and there. Nothing to worry about, especially for a party that has an absolute majority. Until the day he lost it, precisely. Departures from the parliamentary group have multiplied, in recent weeks two large waterways.
And this time, the problem was not the youth of the movement but its genesis, the famous and left and right. The left of the party very quickly considered itself abandoned, shifted vis-à-vis the orientation judged right-handed of fiscal and social reforms. And the centrists of the movement, in turn, went to the right, to found a parliamentary mini-group and finally become this dwarf who, perched on the shoulders of the giant, allows him to gather fruit (to win the majority).
Departures to the left, others to the right. Maybe it will allow Emmanuel Macron's party to keep its center of gravity "and left and right"?
It could have been, except that the preparation of the second round of the municipal elections is sending a solid message from the right. In five of the ten largest French cities, La République en Marche is behind the Les Républicains party.
Lyon, the city of Gérard Collomb's failed return, was a detonator. In Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rouen, Tours, each time the President's party swore allegiance to the right, which returned politeness, for example in Strasbourg. Of course, the governing bodies of both parties take great care to explain that these agreements are strictly local. And that they do not commit in any way to the result, at the national level.
No agreement between parties, therefore: only local.
Here. It's a bit of a posture. Because in reality, these agreements are somewhat a reflection of what is happening inside the President's party, and at its head in particular. The two leaders of the movement are no longer talking to each other, against a backdrop of political tension, and the little hands note that the Delegate General, Stanislas Guérini is leaning more and more, around him, on personalities from the right, formerly UMP or Republicans.
Little by little, the central positioning of En Marche becomes a centrist positioning. And as François Mitterrand said, in France, the center is neither left nor left.