Just like Trump, Macron has little respect for democracy. After the victory of the Left against the Right and against the fascists in June, and faced with a parliament where the Left alliance, the New Popular Front, won the biggest grouping of MPs at the elections, the president has appointed a Prime Minister from the losing side! This is because the Left had promised to reverse his attacks on pensions, and raise the minimum wage, among many other things.
After eight weeks of refusing to name a Prime Minister, the French president has chosen an old, right-wing hack, Michel Barnier. The fact that he is advanced in age (73) is no real surprise. The job is a bit of a poisoned chalice, so it required someone who no longer had a career to risk (the previous PM, Gabriel Attal, was a youthful 35).
Barnier is known for having voted against the legalization of male homosexuality in 1981, and having been top negotiator with the UK over some treaty a few years back. He was also minister of Agriculture and Foreign Secretary in the time of conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy. A few years ago, his proposal for draconian racist immigration control surprised those who had thought of him as a moderate. He comes from a party, Les Républicains, which got 6.6% of the votes in the first round of the June elections, and has 50 MPs in the National Assembly (the New Popular Front has 160).
Sophie Binet, leader of the influential trade union confederation, the CGT, said that Barnier’s appointment showed “contempt for the choice of the voters”. Thomas Portes, Member of Parliament of the France Insoumise, a railway worker well-known for his involvement in the Palestine solidarity movement, commented: “the political compass of Michel Barnier is his hatred of the people”. Barnier seemed to confirm his elitism today claiming he would take into account “the people below”.
He was not Macron’s first choice by a long way. If the Left alliance had split and a social-liberal Socialist Party PM had got enough support from the right to manage to survive, this would have been easier for Macron. But the divided Socialist Party leadership narrowly voted last week against accepting a government led by Bernard Cazeneuve, who had left the Socialist Party two years ago but remained within its traditions. Without an immediate prospect of splitting the Left Alliance, Macron has preferred to go for an openly right-wing character. Barnier immediately announced his priorities were law and order, and cutting immigration. He also said there would be “changes and breaks”, but whether to the Left or to the far Right he did not specify.
The appointment opens up a new phase in the deep political crisis here, but this is far from the last one. Barnier will have tremendous difficulty getting a majority in parliament for any legislation, and may rapidly lose a vote of confidence once parliament reassembles on the third of October.
The media are presenting him as having “the politics of consensus”. In fact, he will be hoping that the votes of the 140 or so far-right MPs will help him survive, so he is bound to be brandishing fantasies about French identity being under threat from immigration, etc. This may well not work: Marine Le Pen is not ready to play junior partner to a discredited president, though for the moment she is declaring a “wait and see” attitude. All the components of the New Popular Front have declared they will propose a motion of no confidence as soon as parliament reassembles.
Departing Macronite Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, commented “French politics is sick, but there is a cure, providing we move away from sectarianism”. By “sectarianism” he means wanting real change, higher wages, taxes for the wealthy and fighting racism and Islamophobia.
The resistance is getting organized. La France Insoumise (France in Revolt) and a series of youth organizations have called over 150 demonstrations across the country to defend democracy, Saturday September 7th. After Barnier’s appointment, the Green Party has also called to join these demonstrations, although the Socialist Party has refused to join the mobilization.
It is impossible to characterize the politics and priorities of the New Popular Front without looking at the parties which make it up, which have in no way merged. The France Insoumise is the most radical, dynamic and determined of the four parties in the NPF. It has launched a campaign to have Macron impeached because he has not respected the results of the elections. The Communist Party, Socialist Party and the Greens are not supporting this.
The French constitution forbids repeat parliamentary elections before next June, so this will be a long crisis. Encouraged by the massive vote in June for the NPF programme – which included reversing attacks on pensions and unemployment benefits, papers for undocumented migrant workers, and wage rises for low-paid workers – trade union leaders are announcing days of action for the beginning of October. To force the implementation of the dozens of excellent reforms in the NFP programme, however, workers’ resistance will have to go far beyond what the national union leaders have in mind.
There is no need to artificially oppose electoral and parliamentary activity with resistance in the streets and workplaces. Of course, in the final analysis, the latter is more crucial. But it is because of the electoral alliance and the massive people’s campaign against voting Le Pen that we do not have a fascist government in France today. And parliamentary activity can matter. The success of the parliamentary left in keeping fascists off the House Affairs committee has its importance. The left-dominated House Affairs committee will not be suspending MPs for displaying Palestinian flags in the assembly, as was the case last year. The fewer fascists in institutional positions, the better.
If Macron gets away with ignoring the election results without a mass fightback, Le Pen will be much reinforced in her struggle to replace democracy with something much more sinister. Anti-capitalists must vigorously defend the very limited democracy parliament gives us. We must demand a Left government, since the Left came out first in the elections. And the campaign to impeach Macron because of his contempt for democratic procedures must be supported.
