Macron’s party crumbling as defecting MPs believe the party is over
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Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party has begun to crumble at the edges in a sign of the domestic difficulties piling up for the French president as his popularity ebbs.
Members of parliament are abandoning La République en Marche (LREM) ahead of local elections next month, when Mr Macron’s followers are expected to do poorly nationwide.
After three defections last week the party now has 300 members of the National Assembly, down from 314 at the start of its term and falling towards the 289 representing an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament.
Recent opinion polls show less than one-third of the French now view Mr Macron favourably, and voters in the municipal elections are expected to hand unprecedented gains to Marine Le Pen and her extreme right Rassemblement National as well as to the greens on the ecological left.
LREM scored a landslide parliamentary victory in 2017 in the wake of Mr Macron’s remarkable rise to the presidency in his first campaign for elected office. The liberal party’s rise left France’s more established political parties in tatters.
“There have been many defections,” said Matthieu Orphelin, who was one of the first MPs to leave a year ago. He added: “There was a syndrome of us all being very well behaved because we didn’t want to cause problems for the government, but today there are lots of members of parliament who don’t want to play that role.”
The ability of Mr Macron’s government to pass vital legislation is so far not seriously at risk, political analysts say. LREM can rely on the votes of a smaller party — François Bayrou’s Modem — while most of those who have quit remain broadly sympathetic to Mr Macron’s liberal agenda.
But the exodus of disgruntled MPs ahead of the municipal polls illustrates the political storm clouds gathering for Mr Macron and LREM’s leaders as they contemplate the next presidential and legislative elections of 2022.
