By refusing to accept that Emmanuel Macron has chosen a prime minister from the political right rather than someone from among them, the French political left is about to make a grave mistake. It is set to impose a ban on Michel Barnier from day one, but not only will this ban not bring him down – because the left does not have a majority –, not only will this defiance not work to the left’s advantage, but it will complete the process of turning the far right into a full-fledged player on the political scene.

Much more skillfully than the left, the “Lepenists” of the National Rally have preferred to “judge by evidence”. They will wait, they say, to see if the policies of the future Barnier government meet their “demands”. They will, they say, “keep an eye on it” and in this way they will become indispensable.

At any moment they choose, they can announce that they want to ban this government, and then the left will find itself in an impossible situation. Either it would have to disgrace itself by voting with the extreme right against a right-wing but perfectly democratic prime minister, or it would have to save Michel Barnier’s neck by going against the no-confidence vote it will have wasted on him.

In both cases, consistency will be on the side of the National Rally and not on the side of the left. In either case, the far right will be able to pose at the 2027 presidential elections as a moderate force that, unlike the left, has played for stability but can no longer support a right wing that it will say is incapable of fighting immigration and the high cost of living.

With this sulky child posture, the left is thinking with its feet. They must not make this mistake. The left must not vote for this nonsensical ban. The left must see reason, but at the moment it is all in a rage because, as it chanted in the streets on Saturday, it was the left that should have formed the government, the left that came out on top in the snap legislative elections this summer, and not Michel Barnier, a member of a party, “Les Républicains”, that the voters relegated to the very last place in those elections.

This is true. There is a “democratic anomaly”, as the more moderate say, but the left is wrong, totally wrong to complain because it is in fact them who are to blame for this situation and no one else.

While the voters had divided the National Assembly into three main blocs – the united left of the New Popular Front, the centrist parties on which Emmanuel Macron relies, and finally the “Lepenists” of the National Rally – the left behaved as if it had a parliamentary majority of its own.

Strangely, the left confused a relative majority with an absolute majority, and that is not all. It also allowed its most radical component, La France Insoumise, the “France Unbowed” to declare that it intended to put forward “its entire programme”, even though this common programme, hastily adopted in order to present a united front against the extreme right, was considered completely unrealistic by the centre and the right, which did not want it.

Instead of seeking the allies that would have enabled it to take the reins of the majority coalition, the French left cut itself off from all the democratic forces with which it could have formed a united government. Instead of defining the priority measures which it would have had the merit to push forward, it wasted weeks trying to find a common candidate for prime minister, a complete unknown, closer to the “Insoumis” than to social democracy, who it was clear would not win a majority in the National Assembly.

It would therefore have been surprising if the President of the Republic had not rejected her, whether out of disagreement with her programme or because Michel Barnier was more likely to win a majority than she was. It may well have been for both reasons, but the fact is that it is the head of state and not the political parties, even if they are in the lead, that the Constitution entrusts with the task of appointing the head of government.

So, Emmanuel Macron did not commit a “coup d’état”. Nor is it true that he never wanted a left-wing prime minister. I will be able to testify to this when the time comes, but the situation that has arisen is obviously not good. It is even worrying, and instead of making useless accusations, the left would do better to reach an agreement with Michel Barnier on common objectives, so that it is they and not the Lepenists who put the Prime Minister “under surveillance”. They could still do it. It could still turn the situation around, but only if it stops aspiring to the title of the world’s most childish political left.

(Photo credit: Jeanne Menjoulet, flickr.com/photos/jmenj/)