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Backing the overthrow of Michel Barnier’s French government is a watershed moment for Marine Le Pen.
It could offer France’s best chance of power yet as the head of France’s far-right national rally.
“I am not calling for the resignation of Emmanuel Macron,” she said, but made it clear that she was responsible for France’s political deadlock and that “the pressure on the president will get stronger and stronger”.
Before she decided to push for Barnier’s downfall, she said she was not the “master of the clock” — the one who set the agenda.
But that may be exactly what she has become now, having toppled Emmanuel Macron’s second government when he defeated him for a second term in 2022.
As his presidency always looks tenuous, it is Le Pen who seems to have the upper hand.
However, this situation is not without immense risks for him as well.
Le Pen has played the waiting game for years as leader of the National Rally. He may be closer to power now – but he has big choices to make.
Armin Steinbach, a professor at the HEC Business School in Paris, says pushing for a no-confidence vote “comes as quite a risk because people are now wondering if she is really acting in the country’s interest.” or his personal interests,”
“What is clear is that this is not about Barnier… it is about her trying to depose and undermine Macron,” he told the BBC. “Obviously for personal ambition to make himself the next president,” he told the BBC.
Le Pen has long sought to “normalize” the Rallye Nationale (RN) in the eyes of the French public, taking its name six years ago from her father’s old National Front.
Go back a few months to France’s snap parliamentary elections RN came first with 32% of the vote. His mission seemed almost complete, even if he could only finish third in the run-off round.
Now in the dying days of 2024, she is gambling on whether French voters will see her as acting in the national interest to topple a weak government as she objects to a 2025 budget aimed at France’s budget. The deficit has to be reduced to 6 percent. of national product, or GDP.
Barnier had already agreed to many of his demands on social security – but Le Pen decided that was not enough.
Along with real economic risks for France, there are real political risks in supporting a left-backed no-confidence vote for Le Pen.
After just three months in the job, Barnier has urged MPs to act in France’s wider interest, but Le Pen’s party leader Jordan Bardella has accused him of adopting a “tactic of fear”.
Le Pen’s allies are sensing Macron’s potential downfall.
RN adviser Philip Oliver told Le Monde that the president was “a fallen republican king, with his shirt unbuttoned and a rope around his neck leading to the next dissolution.” [of parliament]”
It was Macron’s surprise decision to call early parliamentary elections in June that has plunged France into political deadlock.
Le Pen argues that Barnier did not include enough of her demands in his budget, while Barnier said his budget was not “appeasing” – and she accused him of being “a kind of was trying to get into a bidding war”. Negotiations
In the words of Vincent Tremoult de Villers, deputy editor of Le Figaro, the RN leader could plunge France into “the great political and fiscal unknown.”
She doesn’t want to be labeled as the politician who pushed France into an economic depression when, in her eyes, Macron is responsible for France’s economic condition.
“This is the culmination of seven years of passion and a remarkable transformation of our public finances,” he said.
There are many French voters who want Macron gone before his term ends in 2027.
A national rally would likely resonate with a wider electorate if it pushed for it, even if Le Pen has not yet done so.
But the RN leader has other issues going on behind the scenes that his critics believe are influencing his decision.
On March 31, a French court will rule on the long-running case against him and other party figures. Allegations of misuse of European Parliament funding.
Prosecutors want him to go to prison and face a five-year ban from public office.
If that happens, his hopes of winning the presidency will die.
For Marine Le Pen, the moment may truly be now or never.
Three times she has run for the top job. If she runs for a fourth time in the coming months, she is likely to win.
Jordan Bardella is already considered more popular than Le Pen in the national rally and beyond, and if Macron completes his term, the 29-year-old party chief will be the favorite to run in 2027.
No French government has fallen after a no-confidence vote since 1962.
Get it wrong and Le Pen will not be forgiven the next time France goes to the ballot box.
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