Just read the headlines Le Monde and above all of Liberation yesterday morning to understand, without a shadow of a doubt, who won and who lost in the never-ending race for Matignon, for the guidance of the new French government.
Le Monde writes: “Premier minister: le RN en arbitre du choix”, i.e. Rassemblement National, the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, defeated in the elections, becomes the arbiter of choice. The reason is simple: the Republicans who express Michel Barnier as prime minister and the Macronians who openly support him have in total, together with some small allied groups, 240 seats in the National Assembly, much less than the quorum of 288 seats that is essential to ensure confidence in a government. This is why Le Pen, with her possible abstention, could become decisive.
The political suicide of the French socialists: personal rivalries but not only
But even more eloquent is the opening headline of Liberation, an independent daily newspaper of the French left: Cazeneuve, “censored by the Ps”. This is the key to the solution to the French political crisis: the socialists have incredibly rejected a socialist personality of the caliber of former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who the President Emmanuel Macron he wanted prime minister, due to internal party squabbles and above all due to the frost that has existed for some time in the personal relations between Cazeneuve himself and the controversial secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, long since lying on the maximalist positions of the most intransigent wing of the Popular Front led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In other words: due to personal rivalries and to sacrifice himself on the Mélenchon line, Faure has given up on pushing a high-ranking socialist like Cazeneuve to lead the new French government and, even more, he has given up on making the socialists the swing vote in French politics. A center-left government could have been born with Cazeneuve as prime minister and the socialists scuttled it before it was born. Incredible, truly incredible, but true. Faced with their suicide, the lackeys of the maximalist socialists may even say that Macron always had in mind to open the door to the republican right but even stones know that this is not the case.
The Socialists' Political Suicide and the Inexplicable Silence of Hollande and Glucksmann
But two things remain to be understood: 1) if the opaque Faure is so subservient to Mélenchon, why doesn't he join La France Insoumise (LFE) directly, the party of the pro-Russian Mélenchon? 2) where has the reasoning wing of the PS gone? Hollande and Glucksmann? In recent days, the anti-Mélenchon faction has grown in the Socialist Party, but the most authoritative voices have so far remained silent, unless they prepare some pro-Barnier surprise in the debate on confidence that will be held in the National Assembly. Be that as it may, the Socialists will long regret the anti-Cazeneuve suicides they have committed in recent days and which have evaporated the good electoral success achieved in the July 7 run-offs. Personal squabbles, subservience and inferiority complex towards Mélenchon? All true, but perhaps, among the Pavlovian reflexes that inspired Faure's clique, there is also - as the director of LeJournal.info bitterly writes, Laurent Joffrin – the repudiation of a modern social democratic party that could have brought France back to the glories of the unforgettable President Francois Mitterrand. But sometimes the left seems to have a perverse taste for letting the right win.
