Le Pen defends decision to topple French government as ‘reasonable’

For the second time in the history of the French Fifth Republic, a prime minister has fallen victim to a vote of no confidence. For the first time, it happened in the absence of the main driving force of his debacle.

When Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of the Assemblée Nationale, announced Michel Barnier’s forced resignation on Wednesday, December 4, Marine Le Pen was nowhere to be seen. The troops of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, without their boss, were modest in their triumph, some not even bothering to return to their seats for an announcement that they swore was in no way “historic.” Their leader had given instructions not to applaud his ousting.

Far from the Assemblée, Le Pen wore the same serious expression on the set of French channel TF1’s 8 pm newscast. It had been necessary to “clear the air” on a decision that raised questions even among her own supporters, she said. No, she continued, this was not a “victory” but “the only dignified solution”; no, she insisted, she has not refused to compromise and has been “very reasonable” – although she has rejected Barnier’s costly concessions.

Is the right-wing electorate, once tempted by the Le Pen option, likely to be put off this new adventure proposed by her? She cited the “granite institutions” forged in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle and architect of the Constitution Michel Debré, and referred to her MPs as “companions,” as the Gaullist troops called themselves.

A few hours earlier, from the podium in the Assemblée, Le Pen was on a more forceful attack. She decried Barnier, the head of “a government of circumstance, and eventually, of appearance,” the bearer of a “technocratic budget” without “direction or vision”; said Barnier’s allies Gabriel Attal and Laurent Wauquiez were the schemers who plotted the prime minister’s downfall and singled them out for their reneging on pension indexation or tax hikes; and called left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI), with whom she passed the motion, “carnival Che-Guevarists.” But, most of all, she attacked her real target, President Emmanuel Macron, no longer hiding her hopes for his resignation. “This will be the real shock of hope that France is waiting for,” she snapped, hijacking the phrase used by the president to describe the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral on December 7.

Disoriented supporters

While waiting for this “shock of hope,” the RN knew it had to make a clarification. Since putting forward the vote of no confidence on Monday, December 2, it has closed ranks around a decision reached behind closed doors in a seven-person meeting around the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, and Le Pen.

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