00:00Let's cross to the National Assembly again, and France 24's Clovis Casali, one party at the National Assembly, Clovis, not calling for a new prime minister, but an actual change of president, and that is the far right, far left, French unbowed.
00:16Absolutely. France unbowed, the radical left, the far left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and I'm joined by one of their MPs, Madame Lejeune, from Essen, which is just outside of Paris.
00:33You're an MP that must be extremely relieved, happy. How do you feel after this vote that sees François Bayrou out? He's no longer prime minister of France.
00:42Well, I think what's important to remind is that asking for the confidence is the normal thing to do in a functional democracy.
00:51So this vote was long-awaited for. The government of François Bayrou had no democratic legitimacy.
01:01So in a way, this is a huge victory for the French people, because several times they had voted against Macron's policies,
01:08and several times we've had prime ministers and governments that have been pushing through policies of that same type.
01:16So today, it's a victory for the French people, and this victory, we hope, can carry on on Wednesday,
01:23when the movement of the 10th of September will mobilise in opposition to Macron's policies.
01:29What do you actually want for France? Do you want new parliamentary elections? Do you want a new president?
01:35What is the radical left François Bayrou really calling for?
01:39Well, we believe this is not just a crisis about the debt. This is a regime crisis. It's a crisis of the Fifth Republic.
01:46So yes, we do want another institutional regime. We want to go towards a Sixth Republic.
01:52And we also want another president, because it's been shown in the European election and also in the SNAP elections last July,
02:02that Macron has no democratic backing anymore. And his policies have been very harmful today.
02:09We've got a level of poverty that is rocketing in France.
02:12We have a level of deindustrialization, which is also soaring.
02:16And all of this is the result of Macron's policies. So today, the chaos has been created by these policies,
02:24and the only way out of it would be to have President Emmanuel Macron resign,
02:30and we could go towards new presidential elections and really have a serious debate about what direction we want to go to.
02:36Obviously, President Macron has always said, I'm not quitting. He's not resigning. That's what he said.
02:42He doesn't even want in that parliamentary election. What he wants is trying to find a prime minister to get some kind of consensus here.
02:49If he picks someone from the left wing, your former allies, the Socialist Party, if he picks a socialist leader,
02:57and if the socialist prime minister decides, for instance, to reform the pension system,
03:04go back on the pension reform, and carries out left-wing policies,
03:09could you back that government, or at least not censor that government?
03:13Well, we have been elected on a program, the program of the New Popular Front,
03:18that we presented together with the Socialist Party last July.
03:23And today, the direction in which the Socialist Party want to go is in clear rupture with this platform that we defended together.
03:31So you would not support them?
03:32We cannot support a government that would not apply the platform that we have been elected on.
03:37Even if it's a left-wing, leaning government?
03:40So they would be obliged to form a coalition with the Macronists, with the centrists,
03:46and this is exactly what we've been fighting against these past years.
03:50So very clearly, we could not back this type of government.
03:54Madame Lejeune, thank you very much.
03:55You're an MP for France Unbound, the radical left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
04:00And as you've just heard, François, no way they will not back a Socialist Prime Minister.
04:06It's not the plan, especially if the Socialists have to conclude an alliance with the centrists of President Macron.
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