On the eleventh day of action against pension reform in Paris (and throughout France), I found myself in the small post-industrial town of Vitry-le-François, in the Marne, where two political tendencies are in competition. The first is the considerable rise of the extreme right behind Marine Le Pen’s flag. The second is displayed under the banner of a certain Charles-Amédée de Courson, a centrist deputy from an old family of the Norman aristocracy. The latter almost brought down the government of Emmanuel Macron on March 20 with a motion of censure bringing together a coalition of groups, including 19 Republican rebels, who normally hate each other. The National Rally has also voted for the motion of censure of the centrist.
The use of the notorious article 49.3 by President Macron and his Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne – to impose a lowering of the retirement age from 62 to 64 without the consent of the National Assembly – has exasperated deputies of all ideologies. Courson appeared as the man of compromise.
The question that preoccupied me, on this dreary and rainy April 6, was the following: can a revolution emanate from the center? To find out more, I spent two hours with the deputy Courson in his stronghold, at the restaurant Le Grillardin. Dressed in black, tie and framed glasses, Courson definitely does not look like a revolutionary. Mandated by his small parliamentary group LIOT to deliver the speech supporting the motion of censure, Courson hardly looked up from his platform to look at his audience. Focused on his text like a serious student, he defended “several values which are attacked by this text on pensions”: “a decentralized nation”, “a united society”, “a social Republic” and “a free society”. “The decline in the legal age from 62 to 64 actually crystallizes all the injustices”, he took care to specify.
However, it was the “denial of democracy” that most outraged Courson. Addressing Borne, seated in the front row, he said: “We tabled this motion of censure, because you have clearly hijacked the spirit of the Constitution […]. Dare I also remind you that this pension reform project has no democratic legitimacy? When the President of the Assembly cut off the microphone after exceeding the prescribed ten minutes, ironically just after his call to “find the path of listening” and “respect for our fellow citizens”, Courson continued to speak Like nothing ever happened.
“I learned that at the Jesuit college: a good speech has an introduction, an outline announcement and a conclusion,” Courson told me before starting the dish of the day, a veal blanquette. A style of writing said without “fla-fla”. Fortunately, because its sober and clear presentation was paradoxically electric, more effective than the belligerent rhetoric of the leftist deputies of the NUPES. How did he get there?
“Macron’s position favors extremes”, according to Courson, and “if we continue like this, in four years it will be Marine Le Pen and [Jean-Luc] Mélenchon in the second round. Now fortune smiles on Le Pen. Courson cited a recent poll which showed the leader of the National Rally winning against Macron 55% to 45% if we redo the 2022 presidential election today. “Do you realize where we are? My idea, with my group, was to say: “we must stop the massacre”, bring down the government, and force new legislative elections.
Son and grandson of resistance fighters, Courson knows the rightist threat closely – Le Pen won 57% of the vote against Macron in 2022 in the 5e constituency of Marne, an increase in its score of 53% in 2017, while Courson there suffered a drop from 72% to 57%. The workers of a city “which has experienced all the restructuring of industry, leaving modest people on the floor”, are indeed seduced by Le Pen. Different from the winegrowers of the adjacent Champagne region, who say they are “tired of paying taxes, of working to feed all these lazy people. No one wants to come to work anymore.”
Why would Macron risk the civic and moral health of France to rectify the financing of pensions, asks Courson, believing that this file could have been settled with compromises never discussed by the government, for example with the addition of a day of work in the year by eliminating one public holiday among the twelve in force? Because Macron has a “Hegelian conception of the exercise of power”, which makes him believe that, even if “one knows nothing” and “that one has never directed anything in one’s life”, since one ” came by unlikely circumstances to power […], you can do whatever you want with it. We decide, and it applies. There is in him a “total absence of a social dimension, total. When you look at his life, he never devoted an hour to others, ever”.
Following the validation of the pension reform by the Constitutional Council, there remains for the moment “the street” – “the people”, Courson corrects me – to lead the fight. 1er May, an emblematic day of mobilization for the left, will see massive demonstrations. However, it is the center that will have the last word, according to Courson: “The government is hanging by a thread, with eight or nine Republican deputies [de centre droit] who can bring it down at any time. »