EDITORIAL. After the battle against the pension reform, the Nupes in search of a strategy

In the Social Affairs Committee, thanks to the support of LR deputies, the majority therefore deleted Article 1, which repealed the postponement of the legal age from 62 to 64 years old. Mathilde Panot, the leader of the rebellious deputies, may well urge a “maximum popular pressure” in the street on Tuesday June 6 for the 14th day of mobilization, it is therefore an inoffensive text, without any significance, which will be debated in the hemicycle on the 8th.

At the end of a marathon of almost six months, we are coming to the end of the end of the extensions. And here is the Nupes sent back to an existential question: is there life after June 8? The criticism issued behind the scenes by some elected socialists and environmentalists is that the Nupes has done too much on pensions.
Unless there is a twist, the last episode of the pension soap opera is scheduled in a week. The outcome is known: the reform, enacted a month and a half ago, will come into force on 1 September.

What strategy for after June 8?

The problem of the Nupes is that she has no script for the sequel. The social conflict, carried by invigorated unions, gave it color. But embarked on a strategy of tension dictated by the rebels, she has never ceased to denounce the attitude of the government and Emmanuel Macron, whom she accuses of undermining parliamentary democracy. But the left did not anticipate the outcome: a defeat, at least legislative, which was quite predictable.

Anti-macronism remaining its main cement, the battle for pensions was quite comfortable. Since the beginning of the year, she has crushed all the other subjects. On the inflation of food products, and even more in recent days, on the hunt for fraudsters opened by Gabriel Attal, “the green ISF” evoked by the economist Jean Pisani-Ferry, or on immigration, the left has been very little audible.

On all these themes, the debate has taken place between the right and the government, and sometimes even within the majority. After June 8, Nupes will have to demonstrate that it can put forward new ideas on issues other than pensions.