Is new alliance in works, extending from Socialists, Ecologists, Communists to centre-right?

4 months ago

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00:00We can now bring in Paul Smith, Associate Professor and Head of French and Francophone

00:04Studies at the University of Nottingham. Good afternoon, thank you for joining us on the

00:07programme today. Do we know what the President is likely to do, given that it looks like this

00:14government has its days numbered now? We don't really know, no. There are several names that

00:20are doing the rounds. There are figures within Macron's majority, one or two names, Sébastien

00:26Le Connu, and also Gerard Darmenat has been mooted as a possible replacement. The alternative,

00:33as Clovis very rightly said, is to pick someone from the left, and certainly the socialists

00:39are saying that the condition of their support would be for that person to be somebody from

00:44the Socialist Party, but there might be, and I stress the word might, there might be a candidate

00:49who is currently in the Parti Socialiste but has a left-wing tradition from the Socialist

00:56centre-left. But we're really looking at the possibility of extending what in French they

01:02call the common sort of frame, if you like, the socle, that's actually the base, the plinth

01:07as it were, the Republican base, and extending it again, as Clovis said, from the socialists

01:13and possibly as far left as the ecologists and the communists, all the way to some of

01:19les Républicains. The attitude of the right-wing, les Républicains, will be very interesting.

01:24They've been given a free vote. It's really a question of how the vote looks today and then

01:29where Macron thinks he can go.

01:32At the heart of this current crisis, of course, that upcoming budget for next year, the French

01:39Prime Minister was seeking to shave 44 billion euros in public spending. Has any political

01:46party, in your opinion, come up with an alternative for how to tackle this country's ballooning

01:52deficit?

01:54Well, the socialists have actually come up with an alternative budget. They're not going

01:57to, they're not talking about shaving 44 billion. They think that they can reduce the deficit

02:03by about 30 billion. And of course, the emphasis there on the left, so you would expect them

02:07to be talking about higher taxes on higher earners. That's really, you know, the nub and the gist

02:13of the argument is really where the problem lies and why France has this big deficit. If you're

02:18on the left, you think it's because Macron has made too many concessions to the wealthy. And

02:24if you're on the right, it's because the welfare budget is too high. And so you've got this,

02:29basically, what you've got is this big argument going on in the middle of French politics about

02:35exactly how we resolve the problem of the French deficit. But the socialists have come up with an

02:41alternative and they will be pressing very firmly the case for their alternative budget to be looked

02:49at. Now, that would then cause other problems. Le Pen has said, and there is some nuance here,

02:54Le Pen has said that she would, in due course, vote a motion or put down a motion of censure against

03:00anybody from the Socialist Party leading the government. But there is some, there is still

03:06some negotiation to be done, not necessarily with her, but with the other parties.

03:11The national rally, as you know, has been called, as Clovis said as well, is calling for new

03:15legislative elections. Is this something that the president may consider, given that Emmanuel Macron

03:21is a lame duck currently, and whatever happens, he's likely to end up a lame duck?

03:25Well, I think it's unlikely immediately, because we, although, you know, he's had two weeks to think

03:32about who to replace with, it really depends how the vote goes today and what the lie of the land is.

03:37I think it's unlikely that there would be fresh elections. And the national rally says it does.

03:44And sometimes it says it doesn't want a dissolution. And that would cause its own problems.

03:49Very interesting reading yesterday that Le Pen, one of the views is that Le Pen, although she would

03:55be technically ineligible to stand, would appeal to the Constitutional Council. And that would kind

04:00of set up another kind of political crisis on the, you know, to go on at the same time, if there were

04:05a dissolution. And as Clovis also said, and a lot of commentators have made the point that really what

04:11the far right and the far left are trying to do is to force Macron to stand down. And that seems very

04:17unlikely. But at this moment in time, a dissolution does not seem to be an absolute certainty. But then

04:24we didn't think it was back in June of 2024. So, you know, anything could happen.

04:31Emmanuel Macron tries to project strength on the world stage when we think of him co-chairing the

04:37coalition of the willing meetings for Ukraine, for instance, alongside Keir Starmer. If his government

04:44loses this vote, like it's poised to do, and he's further weakened domestically, won't that

04:49carefully crafted image he has on the world stage take a beating?

04:54I don't think so. I think that, well, yes and no. I think that it's much more subtle than that. I

05:00mean, there is a tendency to see these things in quite a sort of Cartesian, quite sort of black and

05:05white. It's important to understand that the constitution of the Fifth Republic actually allows

05:10the president to stand back, to appoint a prime minister who then takes responsibility for the

05:16day-to-day running, as Bayrou has done, as Barnier did, and as various other presidents have done in

05:21the past. The problem is that there's a very conflated way of reading the constitution, of seeing

05:27prime minister and president as the same person or as being part of the same kind of identity, which

05:33they're technically not. So, and I think that seen from the international perspective, I think that

05:38Keir Starmer and everybody else will say, okay, he has problems domestically, but the president,

05:45the French president still, in fact, almost the only thing that's left of the French president in

05:49this situation is their standing as an international leader. And I don't think that that will be

05:55seriously undermined at this point.

05:57I have to ask about Wednesday, because, of course, there have been calls for this country to be

06:05block. Block Contour is being called. Do you think we could potentially have another yellow vest

06:12movement erupting here in France?

06:16Again, it's quite nuanced, isn't it? The yellow vest movement was very much detached from political

06:22organizations, detached from the trade unions, detached from political parties. And its origins,

06:27the block everything movement on Wednesday, kind of comes from the same place initially as the

06:32yellow vest, very much an online citizens movement. But it's been appropriated by the left-wing

06:39parties. It's been appropriated by trade unions. And that's very different in the sense that if you

06:44have trade unions or parties involved, then you have interlocutors, you have people that the

06:51government can talk to. And that's quite traditional in a sense. And that's very different.

06:57So it's it'll and it'll be interesting to see just how much just what the take up is on on Wednesday.

07:04We'll see what happens. Boltzmann, thank you for joining us on the program. Appreciate it.

07:09Now, we will be bringing you special coverage of that confidence emotion in the National Assembly

07:15on France 24. That's starting from 3pm Paris time, 1pm GMT.

Is new alliance in works, extending from Socialists, Ecologists, Communists to centre-right?

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