French political discussion megathread: Yellow Vest Redux

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It wasn't just a replacement, it's a new government.

Full deets:

Economy and finance: Bruno Le Maire (ex-LR), keeps his job
Interior: Gérald Darmanin (ex-LR), keeps his job (unfortunately)
Foreign affairs and Europe: Catherine Colonna (DVD), French ambassador to the UK since 2019. Career diplomat who served in the Villepin government as junior minister for European affairs, and as spokesperson of the presidency under Chirac (1995-2004).
Justice: Éric Dupond-Moretti, keeps his job, surprisingly as most assumed he was leaving
Ecological transition and territorial cohesion: Amélie de Montchalin (LREM, ex-LR), gets a big promotion from her previous job as public service minister since 2020. Liberal technocrat and former whip of the LREM parliamentary group until entering cabinet in 2019. A big promotion which makes her, with Borne (who as PM is also in charge of environmental and energy planning), lead for the environmental files that FBM has promised to prioritize or something.
Education: Pap Ndiaye (DVG), the big surprise and 'wow factor' of the government. Historian, specialist of racial relations. Very much a sea change from Blanquer and his horrendous obsession with wokism/islamo-leftism, so actually a good choice.
Armies: Sébastien Lecornu (LREM, ex-LR), gets a promotion from the overseas ministry he'd held since 2020. Not sure if he's exactly popular overseas for a whole lot of reasons, but he's well liked in the macronista galaxy.
Health: Brigitte Bourguignon (LREM, ex-PS), gets a promotion from a junior minister title she got in 2020.
Labour and 'full employment': Olivier Dusspot (LREM, ex-PS), the former PS defector gets a promotion after being secretary of state (2017-2020) and junior minister for public accounts (2020-2022). Is also president of Territoires de progrès which is the 'left-wing' satellite party in the macronista galaxy. Faces a corruption investigation.
Solidarities and autonomy: Damien Abad (ex-LR), the latest guy poached from LR: was deputy for Ain-5 since 2012 and president of the LR group since 2019. Was widely expected to join the government.
Higher education and research: Sylvie Retailleau (ind.), 'civil society' newcomer, physicist who was president of the Paris-Saclay university since 2020. Replaces Frédérique Vidale, who had been there for 5 years, and who like Blanquer at national education was also obsessed with islamo-leftist nonsense and was the one who ordered some sort of 'study' on islamo-leftism in universities (and then we still wonder why Panzergirl does well). Seems like a blanket clean-up of education portfolios with the ousting of the woke-obsessed incompetents.
Agriculture: Marc Fesneau (MoDem), low-profile MoDem cadre who had been minister for parliamentary relations since 2018 gets a promotion. Flies under the radar but is well liked in the macronista galaxy.
Transformation and public service: Stanislas Guerini (LREM, ex-PS), more famous as 'the random guy who happened to be the official leader of LREM' (since 2018). Both a mini-promotion but also a way to get him out of the party after his controversial comments initially defending the LREM candidacy of a wife-beater in Dordogne.
Overseas: Yaël Braun-Pivet (LREM, ex-PS). LREM deputy for Yvelines-5 since 2017.
Culture: Rima Abdul Malak (LREM, ex-DVG). Cultural adviser to the president since 2019 and cultural attaché at the embassy in the US (2014-2018).
Energy transition: Agnès Pannier-Runacher (LREM), gets a small promotion after being junior minister for industry since 2020.
Sports: Amélie Oudéa-Castéra (ind.), former tennis player

Junior ministers:

Parliamentary relations and democracy: Olivier Véran (LREM), a surprising demotion for Véran who had been health minister throughout the entire pandemic.
Gender equality and equality of opportunities: Isabelle Rome, author and magistrate who had been a senior official in the justice ministry in charge of gender equality since 2018.
Public accounts: Gabriel Attal (LREM), spokesperson of the government since 2020 and media-proclaimed rising star of macronismo.
Territorial collectivities: Christophe Béchu (Horizons, ex-LR). Béchu is the mayor of Angers since 2014 and a well-implanted local politician in Maine-et-Loire (he was general councillor, MEP, senator, president of the general council, regional councillor). He left LR in 2017 and supported the LREM list in the 2019 Euros.
Foreign trade: Franck Riester (Agir), keeps his job.
Europe: Clément Beaune (LREM), was secretary of state for European affairs so gets a protocol boost.

Secretaries of state:

Spokesperson of the government: Olivia Grégoire (LREM), was previously secretary of state for the social economy (2020-2022) and deputy for Paris-12 (2017-2020). Was in a relationship with Manuel Valls for a few months in 2018.
Sea: Justine Benin, deputy for Guadeloupe-2 since 2017 (elected as DVG, sat with the MoDem). Is the only member of the government from the overseas regions.
Childhood: Charlotte Caubel, was a senior official in the justice ministry in charge of legal protection of children.
Intl. development and Francophonie: Chrysoula Zacharopoulou (LREM), Greek-born MEP.

Besides the promotions and demotions here, there's a few departures from government: Blanquer, Vidal, Barbara Pompili (was ecological transition minister), Jean-Yves Le Drian (foreign minister, who has been in governments since 2012!), agriculture minister Julien Denormandie, defence minister Florence Parly, culture minister Roselyne Bachelot, seas minister Annick Girardin, Emmanuelle Wargon, Geneviève Darrieussecq, Marlène Schiappa. Some were expected retirements, like Bachelot and Parly. Denormandie is a surprise since there was speculation he was being considered for PM, but he announced he's withdrawing from politics for now (still doesn't mean he wasn't fired). Others like Blanquer, Vidal, Schiappa feel like definite firings for me.

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RN has just announced they will vote for a Censorship motion against the government presented by the NUPES related to the imposed-budget, LR votes are decisive in order to the Borne' cabinet (and possibly, the legislature) survival.

Watch LR save Macron's ass again while still LARPing as an opposition party.

QED (though based on these numbers, it's clear Macron also got some help from the anti-NUPES "left" - no surprise there either)

Voting details are here: https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/scrutins/detail/(legislature)/16/(num)/358

All NUPES deputies voted for the motion, except 3 écolo deputies. But only one of the twenty members of the syncretic mish-mash group LIOT (Libertés, indépendants, outre-mer et territoires) voted for it, namely Guadeloupe leftist Olivier Serva (an ex-macronista supported by LFI in the runoff), so, yes the anti-NUPES PS dissidents didn't vote for it, and neither did any of the other components of LIOT: the Corsicans, the UDI leftovers, Molac and the other overseas members, unsurprisingly. Among the non-inscrits, only NDA voted for it, which means that PS dissident David Habib, ex-villieriste Véronique Besse and far-rightist Emmanuelle Ménard.

Interestingly, Ménard didn't vote for the RN's competing non-confidence motion either (which got 90 votes, including one vote for LFI, Martinique leftist Jean-Philippe Nilor).

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In more RN news, Jordan Bardella was just elected as president at the RN congress (having already been interim president since last September), becoming, technically, the first person not named 'Le Pen' to be elected president of the party.

Bardella, of course, is a diehard Panzergirl loyalist/puppet who owes his entire political existence to her and is nothing without her. His profile and biography suits her political project: he is young (27), from the 93 (Drancy), from a modest working-class background, grew up in a cité HLM, of immigrant descent (Italian) and does a fairly good job at following her playbook and speaking her pre-approved language. She made him the RN's top candidate in the 2019 EP elections. And while he's technically the first person not named 'Le Pen' to be elected president of the RN, he's still part of the family: he is dating Panzergirl's niece, the daughter of her sister Marie-Caroline Le Pen and Philippe Olivier (the sister who 'betrayed' Panzerdaddy during the Mégret split). At the congress he defeated, with about 85% of the vote, Panzergirl's ex, Louis Aliot, the mayor of Perpignan.

Bardella was implicitly supported by Panzergirl and most of the party cadres. Aliot campaigned more as a 'traditional' national-conservative, playing a lot on his 'local roots' and experience as mayor a medium-sized city, whereas Bardella has used dogwhistles to the far-right xenophobic/racist Identitarian movement including quasi-explicit endorsement of the 'grand remplacement' conspiracy theory (something denounced by Aliot). But Aliot was perceived as somebody from the 'old FN', while Bardella was the young face of a party which has seen the promotion of a younger generation of new cadres.

Plus ça change, plus c'est pareil.

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With the lingering threat/realistic probability of a dissolution sometime, we've been treated to a very rare poll of legislative voting intentions from Ifop:



Only the far-right - RN and Renconquête too - would make gains, going up to 21% and 5.5% respectively compared to 18.7% and 4.2% in the actual elections. The NUPES would be down a bit, while the presidential majority (and LR) would be stable.

However, this sort of polling is still kind of pointless and says relatively little, except that there hasn't been much change since June, and that a snap election would be rinse and repeat, just with a few more far-right racist creeps elected. I'm not quite sure why Macron seems to be quite excited at the prospect of a dissolution, but he's not very good at political calculations these days.

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Definitely not going to start a thread for this, but there was a departmental (cantonal, for us retros) by-election in Perpignan-5 today. In 2021, the left gained it from the right and beat the RN by 96 votes in the runoff. Perpignan-5 includes the western/southwestern parts of the city and the suburban commune of Canohès.

Louis Aliot, the RN mayor of Perpignan, led the RN binôme and got 44.1% today. The right, led by former departmental councillor and mayor of Canohès Jean-Louis Chambon, won 27.6%, narrowly beating out the left-wing incumbents (by 43 votes) for a spot in the runoff. In 2021 the right-wing had missed out on the runoff by just 1 vote (to the left). Aliot is probably the favourite to win in the runoff, which would give the RN its first two seats in the Pyrénées-Orientales dept. council.

Turnout was 21.6% overall. This was basically a name recognition and notoriety election, with Aliot winning 53.7% in Perpignan (against 34.1% for the left and 10.2% for the right) where turnout was just 14.5%, and the right-wing duo winning 42.3% in Canohès (against 36% for Aliot and 19.9% for the left). Turnout was 37.2% there.

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First round of the LR leadership election

66,216 voters out of 91,110 eligible members

Éric Ciotti (Alpes-Maritimes deputy/fascist crook) 42.73%
Bruno Retailleau (Vendée senator/Catholic-conservative 'establishmentarian') 34.45%
Aurélien Pradié (Lot deputy/'young guard' party reformist and 'social right') 22.29%

Ciotti should not require an introduction but he is a crypto-fascist (zemmourista variety) creep (and also, unsurprisingly, apparently a crook leeching off public money) who surprised by doing so well in the 2021 LR presidential closed primary and ran, on paper, as the 'unapologetically right-wing/far-right and racist/fascist' candidate even though all three candidates sounded the same on those toxic immigration/identity issues, and Ciotti apparently lost some support by (surprisingly) clearly condemning the RN deputy's racist outburst about African migrants. Ciotti is very anti-Macron (being on record as saying he'd vote for his friend Zemmour over Macron in a runoff) known for his focus on security and immigration issues - he notably wants to create 30,000 new prison places, a bunch of new hardline security laws (with xenophobia thrown in for good measure), abolish jus soli, end family reunification migration, expel all illegal immigrants, 'fight Islamism' (by the totally not contradictory symbolic theatre of writing 'Judeo-Christian roots' in the constitution and putting 'laïcité' in the national motto). On education, he wants to fix the education system by fighting 'wokisme' and making it how it was in the Good Ole Days of the 1890s - with school uniforms, mandatory 'vouvoiement' of teachers, forcing students to stand when teacher, raising the flag and singing the anthem and 'focusing on the basics'. On the environment, his platform mostly talked about how Sandrine Rousseau is a bigger threat than climate change. Despite living off the state, he spews the usual neoliberal talking points about 'economic freedom' (along with dumb ideas like 'abolish 2 regulations for every new one'), hates social housing (you know why) and talks about the value of 'work' despite being a talentless career politician. Ciotti wants to abolish presidential primaries and appoint Laurent Wauquiez as the 2027 candidate as early as next year.

Retailleau, senator for Vendée since 2004 and leader of LR in the Senate since 2014, is a former diehard filloniste loyalist and, before that, a villieriste (he quit the MPF in 2010). Retailleau is a more traditional Catholic-conservative right-winger, and fairly consistently (and seemingly quite genuinely) Eurosceptic, and seeks to appear as more of a unifier than Ciotti (whose victory might spark another wave of people leaving LR) and has more establishment support, notably Gérard Larcher, the LR president of the Senate. Retailleau is also very anti-Macron and very right-wing, talking a lot about 'defending our ways of life against wokism and Islamo-leftism' and also sounding the usual anti-immigration, law-and-order hardliner and 'work and freedom' stuff. He's more openly socially conservative, having been part of a small minority of 28 senators to vote against banning conversion therapies and taking the risk of speaking out openly against the LFI-spearheaded proposal to entrench the right to abortion in the constitution.

Aurélien Pradié is the young (36) two-term deputy from the Lot in the southwest, twice winning a traditionally left-wing seat (something he talks a lot about), and was basically the outsider 'young guard' party reformist candidate. He is not well liked by party cadres who describe him as arrogant, individualistic and unlikeable, and wants to reform the party and would like for the party to be able to speak about topics other than immigration and Islam, even though he talked a lot about dumb wedge issues like school uniforms (even confusingly toying with mandatory uniforms in university before waffling around) and ranting about the 'wokistes'. He comes from the 'social right' tradition and was close to Xavier Bertrand, and wants to actively appeal to more people than just rich old people who hate everything (as a specific example of his politics, on pension reform he opposes raising the retirement age - unlike his two rivals - and wants for it to be based on length of contributions). Pradié said that the party needs to 'turn the page' on Sarkozy and also wants to abolish primaries.

Interestingly Ciotti won basically just as many votes as he did in the presidential primary (which had higher turnout: 112,000) and faces the prospect of a similar anti-Ciotti front against him just like in the 2021 primary runoff against Pécresse.

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Ciotti elected leader of LR with 53.7% to 46.3% for Retailleau.

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Still didn't prevented Bompard from explaining the absence of an electoral process to designate the coordination by ‘the level of requirement to animate the poles and represent them at regular meetings is high’ and argue that ‘the democracy isn’t going just through votes, we are working by consensus’. You will note the irony of a party that is promoting citizens’ initiative referendum and a more democratic ‘Sixth Republic’ but is in practice EVEN LESS democratic than the RN.

Another wonderful quote, this time from Mélenchon cultist (manager of his YouTube career) Antoine Léaument: "Le mouvement n'est pas nécessairement un espace dans lequel s'exerce une forme de démocratie au sens du vote."

The cultists going through all kinds of contortions to justify the authoritarian internal workings of their movement is truly quite something.

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Not sure if it's entirely good news, given that this latest PS internal congress gives off real strong vibes of Reims 2008 (and Rennes 1990) - both candidates have proclaimed victory, with Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol denouncing irregularities and demanding that only a verification commission can validate and proclaim results (the results were communicated by party staff dispatched by the leadership), notwithstanding the fact that he proclaimed his own victory before saying that. Faure's entourage also claims there were irregularities in federations where Mayer-Rossignol won, and therefore says they won by a much larger margin (54%). It's obvious that there were irregularities, probably on both sides, because this is a PS internal election.

On official numbers, Faure won with a tiny majority of 393 votes. In the 93, a federation 'controlled' by his faction, Faure won 582 votes (84.4%). There were, of course, lopsided results the other way as well: in the Hérault, Mayer-Rossignol won 83%, supported by the mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse.

Laurent de Boissieu was able to make maps of the results of the earlier motions vote and the leadership vote:

https://twitter.com/ldeboissieu/status/1615248915338600449

https://twitter.com/ldeboissieu/status/1616353623713120258

https://twitter.com/ldeboissieu/status/1616391778990530561

I'm glad to know that even in its death throes, the PS is keeping the old traditions alive!

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Details of votes on the LIOT motion:

Total: 278

RN: 88
LFI: 74
Socialist: 31
Ecolo: 22
GDR: 22
LR: 19
LIOT: 18
Non-inscrits: 4

LR votes in favour: Emmanuelle Anthoine, Jean-Yves Bony, Ian Boucard, Fabrice Brun, Dino Cinieri, Pierre Cordier, Josiane Corneloup, Vincent Descoeur, Fabien Di Filippo, Julien Dive, Francis Dubois, Pierre-Henri Dumont, Justine Gruet, Maxime Minot, Aurélien Pradié, Raphaël Schellenberger, Isabelle Valentin, Pierre Vatin, Jean-Pierre Vigier

Among LIOT deputies, only UDI deputies Pierre Morel-À-L'Huissier and Christophe Naegelen did not vote in favour. Others who hadn't signed on to the the motion, like Ardennes deputy Jean-Luc Warsmann, ended up voting in favour.

Non-inscrits votes in favour were Besse, NDA, Quatennens surprisingly joined by Habib, who had been expected not to support it.

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The RN motion got 94 votes, also a record for a motion of no confidence presented by the far-right. Besides the 88 RN and NDA, it was supported by 3 LR - Pierre Cordier, Fabien Di Filippo and Maxime Minot (who had previously publicly announced he'd vote for the RN's motion too), one Socialist - Christian Baptiste, from Guadeloupe, and one other non-inscrit, the ex-villieriste Véronique Besse.