While an environmentalist MP reached out to the MoDem for the party to join the opposition, Jean-Luc Mélenchon assures that “never” the left will ally with the centrists.
Is the exit of François Bayrou and his reception by MoDem elected officials an opening for the opposition forces? With fewer centrist party allies, the presidential majority would be even more relative than it already is and this could complicate the vote on bills in the National Assembly. “Welcome to the MoDem in the opposition” said the socialist Boris Vallaud yesterday evening and the LR deputy Olivier Marleix in the franceinfo morning show this Thursday.
But despite the welcome, the president of the MoDem recalled that his party remains a “full member of the majority”, even after pointing out the absence of “profound agreement on the policy to follow” and a “step to follow”. ‘humiliation’ on the part of the executive. This last expression did not fall on deaf ears and the president of the environmental group in the National Assembly, Cyrielle Chatelain, slipped to the attention of the centrists that “personally, if the leader of [his] party spoke of humiliation, [she] would draw the political consequences”.
Among the consequences implied by the elected environmentalist, those of voting in soul and conscience with one’s ideas, including when that means voting with the left. “I think that there are subjects on which we can help them to put weight” judged Cyrielle Chatelain, at the microphone of Public Senate, this Thursday, February 8. “I tell them: if it swings to the right, come and rebalance. We have 150 left-wing deputies,” she added in reference to the “political imbalance” denounced by François Bayrou. Citing different subjects such as railways, local authorities, housing and “democratic questions”, the elected representative of Isère analyzes: “We do not agree, we do not have the same social project, they entered into a majority into which we did not enter. but there are subjects on which (…) I am sure that we can find a point of agreement.”
But the agreements between the MoDem and the left on certain texts imagined by the ecologist are not possible for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of La France insoumise. The former presidential candidate also made it known on X: “Popular unity is impossible with Modem which defends positions against social demands and sits in the Macronist majority.” The rebel insisted, ensuring that “never” the left and the MoDem will vote together and preferring to see in the words of the MP “only a little PR stunt”.
With all due respect to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Cyrielle Chatelain assumes her outstretched hand to the MoDem recalling certain common positions with the centrist party on the taxation of superdividends or proportional taxation. “My objective: to enshrine our radical left and environmentalist solutions in the law” she reminds the rebel who defends her positions. If he admits preferring to have additional votes, even those of the MoDem, with the left rather than with the majority, he underlines old positions of the centrists against the left. The two camps seem irreconcilable to him.