As French president Emmanuel Macron attempts to find a new prime minister to replace Michel Barnier, who lost a vote of no confidence on Wednesday, his choices will be guided by whether he can secure approval for his choice from the national assembly, the lower house of the French parliament.
The incoming prime minister would need the support of 288 deputies to survive another no-confidence vote, but could govern on simple majorities for individual bills.
Below we look at the president’s options.
Try again with his current coalition?
A surprising suggestion is that Macron could nominate someone acceptable to his current minority coalition partners, including Les Républicains. This could be Michel Barnier himself, though that seems like an obvious provocation. There are some advantages to this approach – the nominee could be an existing cabinet member and therefore already have security clearance, for example. But it would rely again on the passive acquiescence of Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. And that hasn’t been working out so far.
As the chart shows, his current coalition leaves him well short of a majority.
Find a candidate who the left will support?
The leftist parties stood under one banner in July’s election as the Nouveau Front Populaire, NFP, or New Popular Front. Their bloc won the largest number of seats, and they have made the argument that their support for any prime minister should be a primary consideration. But Macron may find it hard to identify a candidate that will meet his requirements as well as those of La France Insoumise (LFI), the radical left party led by Jean-Luc Mélénchon, who form the largest element of the NFP.
LFI’s parliamentary leader on Thursday morning said the party would “of course” vote against any prime minister who did not come from their own ranks.
The chart shows that such an arrangement would have a comfortable majority on paper, but in practice the coalition would be anything but.
Split the left?
Although the leftwing parties stood under one banner, they are not obliged to remain under it. (It is probable that voters will be reminded at the next election if they don’t, of course). A prominent Green senator, Yannick Jadot, told TF1 on Thursday that the other leftwing parties no longer had “the same strategy” as La France Insoumise, which wants Macron to resign. Jadot suggested a coalition might be possible uniting the “centrist bloc” with the NFP. But such a coalition would also be possible without LFI.
Sébastien Lecornu, the outgoing defence minister who has been identified as a possible new prime minister, put it plainly: “We need to do all we can to detach the Socialists from La France Insoumise”.
In this case we see a smaller majority, but possibly a more workable one. Note that for this to work mathematically it needs Les Républicains, which may be a sticking point for the leftist parties.
