Not appointed to Matignon, what will the candidate of the New Popular Front, Lucie Castets, do?

Lucie Castets has not been appointed Prime Minister by Emmanuel Macron. The candidate of the New Popular Front will first take a step back and will not return to work at the Paris City Hall, where she was director of finance.

After being very present in the media all summer, Lucie Castets is going to ease off on interviews. She is aware that with Michel Barnier’s arrival at Matignon on Thursday, September 6, we are in a different phase. Continuing to run around TV sets in order to campaign to become Prime Minister would not make much sense. The disappointed and angry NFP candidate will therefore take advantage of the next few weeks to rest, after a summer at a frenetic pace: between meetings with the New Popular Front, media appearances, travel, the tour of the summer universities of the four left-wing parties, discussions with non-NFP MPs to seek allies. But Lucie Castets assures us that she is still “available to the New Popular Front in case the Barnier government falls.” “The government’s lifespan will probably not be very long so she can hope that her name will come back then,” slips a socialist. Moreover, the boss of LFI, Manuel Bompard is formal: “Lucie Castets will remain our candidate as long as there is the same Assembly.”

What is certain, however, is that Lucie Castets will not return to work at Paris City Hall, where she was Director of Finance. She remains a civil servant and will have a choice to make by mid-October: either ask Bercy for a new position since she depends on the finance administration, or take leave to work in another field, for example in an association or a foundation. After the whirlwind of the campaign for Matignon, Lucie Castets is still thinking. “The rest remains to be written”, she confides.

On the left, in any case, we can see her staying in politics. “Of course she has to continue politics”, “Lucie Castets remains the natural spokesperson for the NFP”praise environmentalists. “She deserves to make her mark, she can be very useful to the left,” boasts a socialist parliamentarian, who encourages him to request a constituency for future legislative elections, because according to him, “she cannot continue to play the role of leader of a majority that does not exist.” Getting elected would give her legitimacy in the future, but there is a pitfall that Lucie Castets has in mind. Becoming a member of parliament means choosing a party, a group, giving up her independence. She knows that if her name was a consensus on the left this summer, it is precisely because she was free from the political apparatus.