Censorship, social movements: Barnier faces the autumn of all dangers

Agricultural revolt, social plans, threat of censorship: Michel Barnier is faced with an autumn of all dangers and his method aimed at caring for each of the components of his coalition, more divided than ever, risks favoring individual ambitions for the presidential election.

“Stop killing each other”. This is the message in substance sent Wednesday by the Prime Minister to his supporters after the solo outing of the boss of the right Laurent Wauquiez on pensions, which caused surprise and anger among the Macronists, deciphers a deputy close to both MM . Barnier and Wauquiez.

After threatening to resign when his government was formed and advocating “team spirit” in a government seminar, Michel Barnier once again banged his fist on the table to push the groups of his “common base” has “work together” or even to present a common candidate for the presidential election. Otherwise the “extremes” will be in the second round, he warned.

Because the voters, reports another deputy, find that “it’s a mess” in the government and in Parliament, where the right and the center rejected the draft budget largely modified by the left.

The text is now in the hands of the senators, with a right-wing majority, a configuration more favorable to Michel Barnier who can multiply the gestures in favor of his very relative majority: on pensions for the right, on reductions in charges for the Macronists , or on the single social allowance for Horizons.

Attacks “rude”

A former minister finds that Michel Barnier, because he is a long-time elected official, is acting “very intelligently, by playing opinion against political parties. Where we precisely thought that it was going to be held by the parties”.

The Prime Minister is all the more spared by public opinion since the attacks of his predecessor Gabriel Attal or Laurent Wauquiez are “rude”estimates a group leader.

But the Barnier method finds its limits in its way of treating its partners separately. “It only maintains everyone for themselves”believes the same. And if it can work on the budget, “we are not going to deal with the laws that are coming in pieces”.

Michel Barnier “declares in fact the impossibility of true joint work” because “each of the groups is building its own small aircraft carrier to get its candidate off the ground” in the presidential election, believes MoDem deputy Richard Ramos.

The constitutionalist Benjamin Morel considers that precisely, “for it to hold, we must not thwart the ambitions of the presidential candidates” who risk seeing Michel Barnier as a “rival or someone who would like to neutralize them”.

” Probably “ recourse to 49.3

And this “shallot race” does not however give the deputies “the feeling that they have the capacity to act”adds Mr. Morel.

Michel Barnier’s strategy “pleases the senators” who now have control but “it remains very complicated” for the deputies, who still have nothing to bring back to their constituencies and have “social movements behind our backs”he notes.

Farmers are threatening to bring out the tractors to protest against the Mercosur trade agreement in particular, just like the civil servants’ unions against the savings in their sector, while social plans (Michelin, Auchan, etc.) are multiplying with the result unemployment which is on the rise again.

A rise in anger which could fuel the hypothesis of imminent censorship of the Barnier government by the left and the far right.

Particularly if the government assumes responsibility for the budget by using article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows adoption of the text without a vote.

What Michel Barnier is going to ” probably “ to do, he said Thursday evening in Ouest-France. And he could use this tool as early as the end of November or the beginning of December on the Social Security financing bill.

However, the threat of an ineligibility sentence, which could destroy her ambitions for 2027, could encourage Marine Le Pen to try to regain control, by bringing down the government.

Former socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve already seemed to appeal on Wednesday, calling for “last chance gathering” with a government ranging from the left to the Republicans.