The first motion of censure during Gabriel Attal’s era did not receive support from the National Rally or The Republicans’ deputies. Only 124 voted in favor of the motion, which required 289 votes, more than half of the Lower House’s members, to bring down the government.
There was little suspense. For different reasons, the RN preferred to wait and see the new government’s upcoming projects, while LR deputies, very upset with the executive, are increasingly considering filing their own motion.
Deputies from both sides did not just make an appearance. In the Chamber, on Monday morning, only one LR deputy (Fabrice Brun) was present when Gabriel Attal delivered his speech.
On the RN side, there were none. The other ranks were not much more crowded.
The Greens, Socialists, and Communists were even fewer. “There are more ministers than parliamentarians,” a journalist in the press gallery joked.
“Mr. Prime Minister, everyone knows that you are just a pawn,” lashes out The Unbowed Manuel Bompard. Before continuing: “You are the gentle face of social brutality.
We need to censure you to establish the common interest rather than insularity.” Socialist Boris Vallaud, on the other hand, believes that Gabriel Attal already has a “poor track record”.
“You are not a prime minister, you are a demagogue,” he says to him, before reproaching him for not listening to him during his speech. At the ministers’ bench, Gabriel Attal is indeed busy.
He jokes with his colleagues Rachida Dati (Culture) and Marie Lebec (Relations with Parliament) while Boris Vallaud continues to call out to him. Earlier, the new Prime Minister was at the podium, promising to “respect Parliament” and “its speakers”, advocating for “respect for everyone for the proper conduct of the debates”.
He is then widely denounced by left-wing deputies. “You are the one blocking France,” “You should be ashamed of your arrogance,” for example, The Unbowed Alexis Corbière says to him.
“I had not even given my orientations at the time of my general policy statement and already you had laid down your text as if all that mattered was the little political move,” Gabriel Attal also criticizes. Quite rarely, The Republicans, who were to express their position on this motion of censure, do not even speak, for lack of a speaker.
The ecologist Benjamin Lucas regrets the Prime Minister’s “compass” “erecting opportunism as a method of government.” The deputy Marie-Agnès Poussier-Winsback (Horizons) is ironic about the “creativity” of the left: “You have invented preventive censorship!
No need to wait for the first announcements and the first acts.” Until Jean-Philippe Tanguy (RN) heavily criticizes the executive.
“You have broken France, Marine Le Pen will fix it”. The rejection of this motion was foreseeable.
But it does not prejudge the fate of possible future similar texts that could be filed in the coming months. A Renaissance deputy anticipates: “We have definitively lost the LR.
As soon as they have the opportunity, they will bring down the government. We will have to be very attentive”.