PARIS — If Prime Minister François Bayrou had hoped far-right leader Marine Le Pen would avoid bringing down France’s government because she is banned from running for political office, he sorely miscalculated.
In fact, Le Pen and her National Rally party, which tops the polls in France, look set to play a decisive role in ejecting Bayrou in a no-confidence vote on Sept. 8. They are adamant they want to seize on the deepening political crisis to press for a parliamentary election, and the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron.
Seeking to enact a highly unpopular €43.8 billion budget squeeze, Bayrou and Macron had effectively wagered that Le Pen — who controls the single largest opposition party in the National Assembly — would play along, when they called a no-confidence vote last week.
There was some logic to that gamble. As Le Pen is banned from running for office by an embezzlement conviction that goes to appeal only next year, why would she risk her parliamentary seat by potentially triggering an election? Wouldn’t she rather let Macron’s camp take the heat for painful financial cuts?
That’s not how Le Pen saw it, however. Barely an hour after the announcement of the confidence vote, she vowed she would mobilize her forces to topple Bayrou, and blamed eight years of Macronism for threatening France’s survival. “Only dissolution will now allow the French people to choose their destiny, that of recovery with the National Rally,” she wrote on social platform X.
That ended any speculation that there could have been some sort of deal brewing between Bayrou and Le Pen. National Rally lawmaker Laurent Jacobelli insisted there should never have been any doubt about which direction Le Pen would jump.
“These people imagine that others are as despicable as they are,” he said. “But that shows a poor understanding of Marine Le Pen, who is not cut from the same cloth.”
While many assumed Bayrou had somehow tested the waters with Le Pen before calling the vote, the prime minister struggled to explain why he actually had not. He noted — rather unconvincingly, in an interview on the TF1 channel — that he didn’t because opposition leaders were “on vacation.”
Le Pen hit back and said she had not stopped working over the summer.
Determined to stand in the elections
Left-wing parties also promptly announced their intention to vote against Bayrou. That means his government is toast barring a major U-turn from a significant number of lawmakers.
Bardella and Le Pen are slated to meet with Bayrou on Tuesday, but the signals emanating from the National Rally make it unlikely the two sides can reach a deal.
Should Bayrou fall, Macron faces few good options to replace him, though he is rumored to be considering tapping Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
The National Rally and others calling for new elections argue that two successive center-right and centrist politicians have failed to end the prolonged political crisis born out of Macron’s ill-fated move to call a snap election last year.
In an Ifop poll conducted after Bayrou’s address, 63 percent of respondents said they were in favor of going back to the ballot box, with that figure getting to 86 percent among National Rally voters.
But surveys also show new elections could deliver another hung parliament.
Whether Macron will actually call for an election is, of course, anyone’s guess. Last year’s surprise vote led to the current political deadlock and left deep scars in his camp.
Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s telegenic 29-year-old president, has repeatedly called on Macron to step down despite his mentor’s legal travails — something he would have been unlikely to do without Le Pen’s imprimatur. Le Pen still wields significant control over the National Rally’s communications strategy, which the party is trying to improve after it bungled the tricky question of her succession in the immediate aftermath of the verdict.
One theory is Le Pen has accepted she won’t be able to run for president in the immediate future and is weighing the option of having Bardella name her as prime minister if he runs as the National Rally’s candidate for the Elysée and wins.
Jacobelli, who is a spokesperson for the party, strongly denied this.
“Marine Le Pen never gives up,” he said. “She cannot accept that the leader of the opposition cannot stand for election.”
If there is a new vote — presidential or parliamentary — Le Pen plans to use all the means at her disposal to run.
After a period of shock following the court decision, the far-right leader began consulting various lawyers and legal experts in the spring, two sources privy to her legal strategy said earlier this summer.
Le Pen’s top lieutenants have also zoomed in on another legal path for their champion to be able to run, which would involve challenging the constitutionality of her election ban before the country’s constitutional court.
“We are obviously exploring all legal avenues so that even in the event of dissolution … Marine Le Pen could run,” Bardella told broadcaster TF1 on Tuesday.
“There is a legal route, and although it is narrow, Marine Le Pen is fighting for it.”
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