Macron and his party want to split the NFP. Otherwise, ungovernability and new elections are on the French menu

French President Macron’s design is clear: He wants to keep fending off the candidates of the united NFP, with the far-left LFI party also inside, until they tire and present a candidate of his liking, assuming they give in.

Today Macron received Lucie Castes, the NFP’s proposed name for prime minister. Although the meeting was cordial, Macron made it clear that he would not agree to give her the mandate of prime minister. Not only that, his godson at the head of his party, Attal, has said that he will file a motion of no-confidence against any leftist prime ministerial candidate who receives the support of the LFI. However, FLI is an integral part—indeed,  we might say it is the heart—of the majority that won the elections. The Macronists cannot afford to dictate terms to another movement or alliance or demand that it disband to please them.

Is Emmanuel Macron delaying the deadline because he knows his defeat is inevitable? Is he allowing as much time as possible to elapse before appointing a prime minister because he feels that this power, this unprecedented room for maneuver in the world’s major democracies, which he has enjoyed for seven years, is about to slip out of his hands?

After all, we could say that the president has more than one ace up his sleeve: several times he has managed to turn seemingly hopeless situations to his advantage. Sinorea, he has been “Jupiter,” the intioccable, the invincible. Who else but him would have managed to rise from the ashes to overthrow the entire old political system in 2017? Who would have emerged unscathed from the Benalla affair? From the revolt of the Gilets jaunes? From the Covid crisis? From the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the great economic crisis that followed?

Yet now this stalemate seems insurmountable. He cannot expect the left to prove itself, for the umpteenth time, only as a puppet in his hands. Its claim to break it may be too much. In the end, the NFP may decide to play it all and break the game, forcing Macron into a new round of elections in which the cheating of the double shift would be much more difficult. Meanwhile, the Rassemblement National opposition watches and waits, and so do the French.