Vote of confidence: for the opposition, the end of the Bayrou government is a done deal

Eventually, some socialists are beginning to find this insulting: can we really imagine them endorsing the budget plan outlined by François Bayrou? While the Prime Minister announced a vote of confidence on September 8, and despite pressure from the government, which tirelessly calls on them to be responsible, the Socialist Party refuses to give in . Like the rebels and the ecologists who have already announced that they would vote "to bring down the government," the socialists are heading towards a vote against. "François Bayrou has chosen to leave. Under the current majority conditions, he knows that he cannot obtain a vote of confidence from the opposition. It is a self-dissolution," asserts the first secretary, Olivier Faure, in Le Monde. "It is obviously unimaginable that the socialists would vote confidence in the Prime Minister." "Voting confidence is even more unthinkable than not censuring," asserts Philippe Brun, MP for Eure, who is responsible for the text. It's a media stunt, he's dressing up his resignation as a Christ-like sacrifice because he wants to be a candidate in the 2027 presidential election. He's never tried to associate us with anything."

While no one in the Socialist Party had any illusions about François Bayrou's press conference, an intervention by François Hollande on France Inter on Monday morning fueled the vagueness sometimes characteristic of the Socialists. "I'm not saying that censorship isn't conceivable at some point, it's likely today, but if there is to be a dialogue, it must be pursued until the end" of the budget discussion in the fall, declared the former Socialist president, calling on François Bayrou to review the distribution of the expected 43.8 billion in savings. "It would be better if it were actually 22 billion in expenditure, 22 billion in revenue," affirmed the Corrèze MP.

During previous budget discussions, the stability argument had convinced the Socialists to engage in negotiations with the government. This time, the plan presented by François Bayrou was untenable for them. This summer, the Prime Minister himself called Socialist MPs on vacation, to no avail. "Don't expect us to march through the ministries," one of them told him. "The government's proposals don't allow us to open negotiations," insisted MP Jérôme Guedj, who is responsible for the Social Security financing bill. On Monday, at a group meeting before his press conference, all the Socialist MPs agreed that François Bayrou was heading straight for his downfall.

"This vote of confidence is in fact a resignation," also analyses Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of the Ecologists. The rebels, who were banking on this social return , for their part insisted on the "victory of the power of the mobilization that is being prepared for September 10," as LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard welcomed. "The current popular mobilization will have won," also affirmed Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Monday evening, while the left called in chorus for a "different policy," the rebels relaunched their calls for the dismissal of Emmanuel Macron .

On the National Rally side, Bayrou's chances of survival at Matignon are no better. Hiding behind their screens while waiting for the official word, that of Jordan Bardella, the Le Pen troops relayed without delay the party leader's sentence: "François Bayrou has just announced the end of his government, undermined by its complacent inaction." While Bardella indicated that her party would "never" vote for confidence, Marine Le Pen clarified that her troops in the Assembly would vote against it, the Pas-de-Calais MP denouncing measures that were "as unfair as they were ineffective." In mid-July, after the announcement of Bayrou's budget plan, Le Pen was already vilifying an "unworthy" budget and opposing tax increases. Clinging to its obsessions, the far right continues to call for a crackdown on the "cost of immigration," notably through the implementation of national preference in the granting of social benefits, and a cut in France's contribution to the European Union. "The decisions you have made are profoundly unfair to French women and men, but, moreover, they will fail to restore France's finances," Le Pen insisted on July 25 in a letter addressed to the Prime Minister.

Before the confidence vote was announced, the RN had repeated that it wanted to wait until the start of the budgetary season in Parliament in October to reveal its hand. A story of playing the responsibility card, when the rebels promised a motion of censure as soon as the parliamentary session resumed? Faced with the new situation, the RN is nevertheless reconnecting with its anti-system fiber . "Our fellow citizens also know who is responsible for this collapse, namely the parties of the system that we have been fighting for so many years: left, right and Macronists," reacted Le Pen, taking up the old Le Penist rhetoric of the "UMPS". More than the fall of the head of government, the RN claims above all to want a new dissolution. Even if, condemned to a sentence of ineligibility with immediate execution , Marine Le Pen could only gain a limited advantage from it.