You know what they say: “A single being is missing…” Sorry! Only two beings are missing and everything is depopulated. Since Richard Ferrand and Christophe Castaner were swept away in the legislative elections, the situation has changed. The former president of the National Assembly and the ex-boss of the LREM group were the safeguards of power, those with whom the tenant of the Elysée communicated in direct contact and in constant flow. It was before and it was easy: Emmanuel Macron decided, the absolute majority executed, and the laws were passed.
Of course, there have been resounding crises: the Benalla affair, the “Yellow Vests”, the Covid crisis and the war in Ukraine that came to break the momentum of the recovery. But this good old Fifth Republic resisted, without capsizing. And the Marcheurs shop, a little too big, a little too empty, will still have been maintained.
Two women are now in charge in the Assembly: Yaël Braun-Pivet at the “perch” and Aurore Bergé at the head of the deputies. “It’s progress. We must no longer live in the past”, confides a Macronist official from the start. For him, “the president at the Élysée must reinvent himselfand the deputies of the relative majority must learn a new way of working.”
Concretely, the Macronist deputies must ensure at all times. It is almost physical, some parliamentarians explain to you: “When you arrive in session at 9 a.m., you have to understand that it can end the next day, at 4 a.m. The pressure is omnipresent.”
The deputies of Nupes on one side and those of the RN on the other take the majority in a pincer movement, discussing each amendment step by step. The Insoumis, increased from 17 to 75 representatives, have fresh troops to hold the position. It’s not the same story as before!
Time to better prepare the legal texts. There will be no extraordinary session at the start of the school year, the days of back-to-back votes are over. But debates upstream, as for the future immigration law. The articles will be better prepared, fifteen or twenty per text, at most, to avoid hell in the hemicycle.
The majority has reason to feel disoriented: times are changing, the president will not stand for re-election. The ambitious come out of the woods. The pages are already turning…