France, Macron receives yet another rejection on the prime minister and is really in trouble –

We are sailing by sight in France where the new card of the president, Emmanuel Macron, to channel a consensus on the choice of the new prime minister, seems to have already been burned. After the leads of Bernard Cazeneuve, the former socialist prime minister, of Thierry Beaudet, the ‘technician’ of the National Council of the Economy, Macron tried again today with the option of Xavier Bertrand for Matignon, but the National Rally opposed it, threatening censorship in the Assembly. “It would be a lack of respect towards the millions of French people who expressed themselves at the polls. So we censor,” said the far-right party, which maintains a dispute as much political as personal with the party president of the Hauts-de-France region. Bertrand, who often boasts of having beaten Marine Le Pen twice in the regional elections, “is scandalous and offensive towards the RN,” added those around the party who support the refusal of a possible nomination of the Republican to Matignon. RN ally Eric Ciotti also said Bertrand would be “censored” if he were appointed prime minister. “We cannot accept this,” said the Socialist Party’s first deputy secretary, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, at a press conference.

The Elysée, meanwhile, has announced, through sources, that the President of the Republic continues “to test the hypotheses of Xavier Bertrand and Bernard Cazeneuve”, even if new exchanges with “other political groups and parties” are planned for today. The political crisis in France has lasted for almost two months, after having swept away the option of Lucie Castets, candidate proposed by the New Popular Front (NFP), on August 26, the choice was first oriented towards Bernard Cazeneuve, whose profile has the double advantage of dividing the left and not being rejected by the right. But even in this case, the RN considers it “impossible” to support the one who was “the last prime minister of Francois Hollande and who would have followed a left-wing policy”. On the other hand, the party of the flame “would accept a technical government”, sources say, which would have the mandate “to implement proportional representation in legislative elections” to “reach a majority in a year”, a new dissolution would not be possible before June 2025. Conditions likely to relaunch the search for a personality of civil society.

On Monday, a third name emerged: that of Thierry Beaudet, president of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (EESC), unknown to the general public and with a rather left-wing sensibility. Welcomed on Thursday and Sunday at the Elysée, this qualified teacher, who has made a career in the mutual insurance sector and who edited the Citizens’ Convention on the End of Life, initially appeared as “a very serious option”, but the idea, welcomed with a certain benevolence by the social partners, has aroused much less enthusiasm within the political class. Both on the left, where the socialist Carole Delga stressed that the person concerned “has never governed”, and in the presidential camp, where a Macronist leader questioned Thierry Beaudet’s ability to “go into the lions’ den in the Assembly”. Even Marine Le Pen’s party seems to have turned up its nose: “His rare political positions have been against the RN”, observe some close to the leadership, while the vice-president Sèbastien Chenu has even described him as “a tool in the hands of Emmanuel Macron to circumvent the choice of the French”.