France | Barely appointed, PM Michel Barnier is attacked by the left and the far right

(Paris) Having just been appointed to Matignon, Michel Barnier came under fire on Saturday from the left, which called for demonstrations in dozens of towns to denounce “a coup de force”, and from the National Rally, which said it was placing the new prime minister “under surveillance”.

This is the baptism of fire for Michel Barnier, who already has to deal with demonstrations called by La France Insoumise, particularly in Paris, where a procession followed the classic Bastille-Nation route, bringing together 26,000 people according to the police, 160,000 according to the organizers. On Saturday evening, the authorities counted 110,000 demonstrators in the country, compared to 300,000 according to the initiators of the movement.

Anger is first directed against Emmanuel Macron and his “democratic coup”, according to the words of the initiators of the march, furious at not seeing Lucie Castets, candidate of a united left with 193 deputies, appointed to Matignon.

“Democracy is not only the art of accepting having won, it is also the humility of accepting losing,” the Insoumis patriarch Jean-Luc Mélenchon said to Emmanuel Macron, perched on a truck in the procession in the capital.

“What Macron is offering us is not cohabitation, it is a provocation,” environmentalist leader Marine Tondelier said on BFMTV, promising not to “resign” herself to the Lille rally.

Geneviève, a 68-year-old retiree marching in the streets of Marseille, is outraged by a “huge denial of democracy that is saturating the population. We haven’t felt heard for months, it’s no longer possible,” she laments, flag of the New Anti-Capitalist Party in hand.

The choice of Michel Barnier, from the right, strengthened the demonstrators’ determination. “We see that a pact has been sealed between Macron’s party, the right and the far right,” LFI MP Aurélie Trouvé fumed to the Parisian press, as chants of “Macron resign” rang out from the crowd.

The initiative, launched at the end of August by two student and high school unions and then taken over by LFI, is part of a broader protest strategy by the Insoumis who have filed a procedure to impeach the President of the Republic in the National Assembly.

But the Mélenchonist troops are struggling to gain support on the left: like the major trade unions, the PS did not relay the call to demonstrate on Saturday and only six elected ecologists and three overseas representatives, in addition to the LFI deputies, initialed the impeachment proposal.

A “fragile” government?

The pressure did not come only from the left on Saturday. The president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella, on a trip to the Châlons-en-Champagne fair, demanded of Mr Barnier that “the subjects of the National Rally” be taken into account by a future government labelled as “fragile”.

While the RN has so far made it known that it would judge Mr. Barnier “on the evidence” and did not intend to try to overthrow him in the National Assembly before knowing the content of his program, the tone has hardened, with the fiery party capitalizing on its contingent of 126 deputies (142 with Eric Ciotti’s allies). “We will undoubtedly have an arbitrator role in the coming months and starting today,” recalled the leader of the RN.

“I believe that from this day on, Mr Barnier is a prime minister under surveillance. […] of a political party which is now essential in the parliamentary game,” he added, while assuring later on TF1 that he did not want to participate “in institutional disorder and democratic chaos.”

“I am under the surveillance of all French people,” retorted Mr Barnier on the sidelines of his first trip as head of government, to the Necker hospital in Paris.

Addressing the left, he rejected the words “coup de force, which there is no need to pronounce”. “We are not in that state of mind. The spirit is to rally around a government action project”, he further argued, arguing that the country’s financial situation was “serious”.

The Prime Minister also continued his consultations at Matignon on Saturday, where he spoke Saturday morning with his predecessor Elisabeth Borne before having lunch at the Assembly with the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet. On Sunday at 11 a.m., he will receive representatives of Horizons, including another former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe.

At stake are government appointments and, above all, the establishment of a road map, a perilous exercise in a fragmented Assembly.