Macron counts on time to save the day as the parliamentary arithmetic turns against him

Several times in recent months I have drawn the attention of Reaction readers to the fact, as I see it, that President Macron of France is up against it, struggling to contain one crisis after another, but still very much in the fight. That is still my view.

This week, in what must be round ten in what promises to be a 15-round contest, he finds his party, La République en Marche, stripped of its absolute majority in the National Assembly. Seventeen of his deputies have flounced out of the party and rebranded themselves as the representatives of something called “Ecology, Democracy and Solidarity” (EDS).

This is very French. In France, party labels come and go. Apart from the Socialist Party, there isn’t a faction in the Assembly that would have sat under their present nomenclature ten years ago, in some cases three.

But the Seventeen – two third of whom are women – aren’t even a new party. Under the rules of procedure, having renounced the En Marche whip they are obliged to reclassify themselves and to choose a different colour that in the parliamentary organogram reflects their slice of the cake that makes up the chamber. As far as I can see, they have chosen dark gray, which artists will tell you is neither one thing or the other in terms of colour, but rather a measure of gradation between black and white.

The only other grays in the Assembly are those of the independents, or “non-inscrits”, whose interventions are typically rooted in either geographical or single-issue questions.

What the EDS want is clear enough. They want the Government – i.e. Macron – to tack from his pursuit of the unions and support for big business towards the green agenda and the concerns of ordinary French people – the ones represented at provincial level by the gilets-jaunes and in the big cities by the public sector unions. They want a living wage for everyone over the age of 18, increased taxes on the wealthy and big corporations, action to close tax loopholes and proof on the ground that France is serious about such matters as sustainable energy and reducing CO2 emissions to zero by 2050.

“We will be an independent group legally registered in the minority category, according to Matthieu Orphelin, the EDS co-president. “We want to build majorities for individual projects and to move beyond traditional divisions. We will vote on all the proposals that advance our values ​​regardless of which political factions they come from.”

Sound familiar? A bit, if you are British, like Change UK in the 2019 House of Commons, or the SDP in the 1980s. They know what they want but they don’t quite know how best to go about it. All they know is that Macron has let them down and that, like Martin Luther (if Luther had believed in leafleting campaigns rather than revolution), they are ready to tape their demands to the front door of the Élysée.

Am I being unfair? Probably. There are lots within En Marche who worry that the party, after just three years in existence, is losing its way. At least the EDS are putting their careers where their mouths are. But its members must surely be wondering where their gesture will leave them when it comes to the next Assembly elections in 2022. Perhaps, like Change UK and the SDP, they will simply morph again into a large existing grouping, mostly obviously the Socialists or the Greens. Either that or – as fellow recalcitrants who have chosen to remain loyal to the President are arguing – there will be a rapprochement closer to the time beneath a new, more radical En Marche agenda.

Meanwhile, the upshot is that En Marche is now one member short of an absolute majority in the Assembly, obliging Macron and prime minister Edouard Philippe to look to the MoDem (Movement for Democracy) Party, with its 46 centrist deputies, to secure the passage of legislation.

For the President, the emergence of the EDS is undoubtely an embarrassment. When he formed his first government back in June 2017 he could depend on a whopping great majority to do his bidding. Today, after a drip-feed of defections, he will be forced to compromise more that he would like and to make deals with lesser mortals. But given that three-quarters of his time these days is taken up with the coronavirus crisis and the looming economic recession – both requiring executive decisions more than legislative responses – he may be hobbled less than appears at first to be the case.

More worrying for him is the slow, gradual ebbing away of En Marche’s authority across the nation. Macron was always about a new beginning for France, in the manner of Margaret Thatcher and the early Tony Blair. Macron counts on time to save the day as the parliamentary arithmetic turns against himInstead, like most world leaders, he is rushing to stand still, desperate to show that he is in command and that Covid-19 does not spell the end of civilised life as we have known it. As things stand, he is riding the storm – just.

But should dissatisfaction with his performance reach the point at which voters are ready to plunge headlong into a new vortex, most obviously that offered by the Far Right, then Macron could find himself less like Thatcher and Blair and more like David Cameron – a gifted leader brought down by events.