Macron dictates timetable: prime minister within 48 hours

Forty-eight hours. Emmanuel Macron, maître des horloges, master watchmaker since the days of the 2017 election campaign, yesterday gave the timetable for the appointment of the new prime minister. During the meeting at the Elysée Palace between the parties that could guarantee republican support - a direct participation or a commitment not to vote on the censure, the no-confidence - the French president wanted to set the pace for a discussion that could have taken a very long time.

The understanding that Macron seeks is not easy. In the climate of permanent campaigning created by the growing expectation of a new vote in September (but yesterday the president ruled out elections until 2027), bringing the positions of all parties with the exception of the Rassemblement national (Rn) and the France Insoumise (Lfi) closer together is a considerable effort. Even if the time horizon seems short. The parties, explained Laurent Wauquiez, leader at the Assemblée of the Républicains, "seem reduced to wondering whether the government will not fall within six months", he said, leaving the meeting with a constructive orientation, however: the neo-Gollists will not vote for a censure, as long as the government does not contain Lfi ministers and the programme does not follow that of the Nouveau front populaire (Nfp), the alliance of the left.

The non-censorship agreement seems to be the platform, the only possible one, on which to build an understanding. Socialists and ecologists also seem willing. "Things have gone quite far," said the first secretary of the Socialist Party (Ps) Olivier Faure, who proposed not to vote no-confidence as long as the next government renounces recourse to Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows a law to be passed without a vote (under certain conditions). Faure spoke of a convergence between the left-wing parties that attended the meeting (socialists, ecologists, communists), François Bayrou's Modem and Edouard Phillippe's Horizons. The name of the prime minister, clearly, is not irrelevant: Faure, together with Boris Vallaud, the socialist leader at the meeting, called for a head of government who is left-wing and 'open to compromise'. These indications were also confirmed by Marine Tondelier, general secretary of the ecologists, according to whom Macron also pledged 'not to put himself in the hands of the Rassemblement national to govern any more'. According to the Elysée Palace, the president noted 'the unanimity of the political forces to no longer depend' on Rn.

Marine Le Pen therefore saw the trap she set for the Barnier government turn into a defeat, causing it to fall. Yesterday Rn president Jordan Bardella protested at the radical right's exclusion from the negotiations (which, however, concerned the formation of a government in which the party would never have wanted to participate), but Marine Le Pen said she was 'happy': for her entourage it was a 'medal of opposition'. Le Pen has also put a strain on the républicains themselves, who seemed to be slowly converging towards Rn. Yesterday, the MEP (and chief electoral candidate) François-Xavier Bellamy protested at the exclusion of some political forces 'including Rn' (actually only Lfi and Rn), which is 'an important political force'. A sign, probably, that the Gaullists feel with some unease the limited weight they are destined to play in the next executive (whereas in the previous one they were definitely in the spotlight).

There is also no shortage of tension on the left. Stubborn - and condemned - to maintain a 'hard and pure' role, La France Insoumise called on its allies, through its coordinator Manuel Bompard, to 'not give in to the sirens and the temptation of national government and grand coalition, because this would lead to reneging on the programmatic commitments they made last year to the voters and electors'. The general secretary of the Ps, Pierre Jouvet, responded by accusing Lfi of wanting to break the alliance (it is the only party that has remained, by choice, outside of Macron's consultations from the very first moment). At the same time, the left's embarrassment at being forced to scale down the anti-Macronism on which it based its campaign emerges from the socialists and ecologists' request to the president to 'step aside' after the appointment of the new government.