French populist leader Marine Le Pen has vowed that her National Rally party will immediately bring a vote of no confidence if President Emmanuel Macron attempts to install any leftist government.
National Rally (RN) leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella said following a meeting with President Macron on Monday at the Élysée Palace that they will seek to take down any government involving the leftist New Popular Front (NFP) coalition.
The far-left has attempted to force President Macron into appointing Lucie Castets as the next prime minister, despite the socialist economist and former deep state civil servant never being elected by the people to any post. Far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon previously threatened to impeach Macron if he did not install her at the head of his next government.
In response to suggestions from Mélenchon that his party could withdraw from the NFP for the sake of forming a government, Le Pen said that it would “change absolutely nothing”.
“The very idea that there will be a New Popular Front government without an elected Insoumise will change absolutely nothing,” Le Pen said per Le Figaro following her meeting with Macron. “In any case, it is La France Insoumise and Mélenchon who are in charge.”
The president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, added: “We have indicated that we are in favour of a motion of no confidence in a probable NFP government.”
The deadlock following the elections, in which Macron made a desperate last-minute alliance with the far-left in the second round of voting to prevent Le Pen’s party from taking power by selectively standing down in constituencies depending on which candidate had the best chance to win, has left France without an actual government for about a month and a half.
Since shortly after the election, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has been leading a caretaker government only empowered to maintain the day-to-day functioning of the state and to act in emergency situations, with no ability to put enact new legislation.
Le Pen, whose party won the most votes in last month’s election but was blocked from a majority by Macron’s strategic voting gambit, said Monday: “The French were able to see the dance of cynics and hypocrites dancing all summer. They elected each other, before attacking each other. We are in reality the only opposition to this single party, the only opposition to chaos.”
National Rally spokesman Laurent Jacobelli also accused Macron of “playing with fire” and “playing with the institutions of the Fifth Republic” in making “unnatural alliances” with the far-left to keep the right-wing populist party out of power.
With no consensus candidate emerging to become the next prime minister, Le Pen has suggested that major decisions could be voted on directly by the French people in referenda.
“Faced with the deadlock resulting from the elections, there are solutions: that of addressing the people directly on subjects of major concern via the referendum,” she said, adding that her populist party is “obviously very much in favour of it.”
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