What future for LREM, a presidential party in the midst of a crisis?

Stanislas Guerini, General Delegate of La République en Marche in Matignon on May 20, 2020. -

• The number 2 of the presidential party resigned Monday, accusing La République en Marche of no longer "producing new ideas", and calling on members of the leadership to do the same to create "an electric shock".

• The departure of Pierre Person, followed by those of Aurore Bergé and Sacha Houlié, is the umpteenth episode of an internal crisis that shakes LREM, after the rout of the municipal elections and the loss of the absolute majority in the Assembly.

• To overcome these turbulences, marchers plead for a profound reorganization of the party, a clarification of the Macronist ideology, and why not a grand coalition with centrist allies.

Everything is going from bad to worse with the walkers.

After disappointing municipal elections, a string of departures of deputies and the loss of the absolute majority in the Assembly, the presidential party is once again shaken by turbulence.

The number 2 of La République en Marche, Pierre Person, resigned Monday morning.

In the evening, two other executives, Aurore Bergé and Sacha Houlié, left the party leadership during a very tense meeting.

Departures that shake a fragile party, again struggling at the ballot box during six partial legislative elections this Sunday.

Internally, the diagnosis is sometimes severe, and we wonder about the future of a party in which even Emmanuel Macron seems to be uninterested.

Created in April 2016 to conquer the Elysee Palace, En Marche !, renamed La République en Marche in May 2017, has proven to be formidably effective in winning votes in the presidential and legislative elections.

During the 2019 European elections, the party saved the day, placing itself one point behind the National Rally, at the cost of an alliance with centrists (MoDem, Agir, Mouvement radical).

Then the electoral machine seized up.

Restructure

“Maybe the party worked too well, and people thought it was enough to be 'On the Move' to be elected.

Perhaps the movement believed that it was enough to have the effigy of Macron, ”blows a macronist from the first hour contacted by

He pleads for a profound change in the functioning of the movement, with “more local anchoring, and less Telegram loops, verticality and virtuality”.

The Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Interior, Marlène Schiappa, also points to an organization that is too centralized.

"We must reconnect with this participatory state of mind, the head office must seek to better promote the taking of local initiative, not necessarily to supervise it," she said on Tuesday in an interview with Le Figaro.

But for the time being, the delegate general Stanislas Guerini seems to be temporizing, by postponing the re-election of the executive board after the regional and departmental elections of spring 2021. In the meantime, he has appointed a pair to replace Pierre Person: the member for Essonne Marie Guévenoux (ex-LR) and Jean-Marc Borello, from civil society and reputed to belong to the left branch of the macronie.

Clarify (finally) his doctrine

In addition to the electoral setbacks, the party, united in support of Emmanuel Macron, also suffers from internal ideological differences, particularly on secularism and the regal.

“We must build an ideological base.

If we don't know who we are, voters won't know either, ”said Yvelines MP Aurore Bergé, who resigned Monday from the party spokesperson.

Philippe Grangeon, member of the party's executive committee and former adviser to Emmanuel Macron, recognizes that the work of ideas remains to be carried out.

“For the future, we must concentrate all our efforts on building the common house.

This process will allow LREM to ask itself the right questions, to clarify its doctrine and I hope to overcome the current difficulties which are all in all fairly commonplace for a political movement which is part of the support for government action and, moreover, very recent in political life, ”he wrote to us.

Bet on a coalition?

This idea of ​​a "common house", or coalition with allied parties, had already been defended by Stanislas Guerini during the re-entry university, on September 11 in Amiens.

This track is favored by the Head of State who is leading discussions with the parties likely to join this alliance.

Does this mean that the presidential party would only find salvation in this future coalition?

"LREM is outdated, we must either give it another life or create something new", loose a framework, who understands that "the president does not like parties, and does not want them".

This macronist believes that we must keep the movement, “because there are people who are well there, and we must not lose them.

But we must raise the concept of presidential majority ”.

A "concept" which will not solve everything, in a system where having a party remains essential, if only to receive public subsidies and lead the next electoral battles.

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• Emmanuel Macron

• LREM

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• Majority