In Macronie, the three ways of saying that the demonstrations do not change anything

“Achieved”, “febrile”, “lost”, “demoralized” … The portrait of the deputies and deputies of the majority portrayed by those of the Nupes, the day after the second day of mobilization against the pension reform, Tuesday, don’t do lace. It must be said that the mobilization did not do it in the lace either: there were 1.27 million people in the street on January 31, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Either, even according to police figures, the biggest national day of social mobilization of the last thirty years in France. What to shake more than one.

The left does not hesitate to try to destabilize its opponents: “We must nevertheless congratulate the rapporteur and the president of the Commission, who each managed to have 15,000 people in the street in their circos! “Laugh in chorus Hadrien Clouet, LFI deputy, and Arthur Delaporte, PS deputy, at the end of a meeting of the Social Affairs Commission, where the text is examined this week. So, demoralized, the majority? 20 minutes went to ask several of its members if the very strong mobilization and the polls are a game-changer in the pension file. Spoiler: no, not at all. But in three different ways.

Those who no longer pretend

“Don’t be naive, we won’t be able to have a majority of French people with us”. The confession is signed Robin Reda, deputy Renaissance (RE) of Essonne. And he is not the only one: among several deputies, we feel the desire to assume an “unpopular reform”, “difficult”, which “worries”. “We will never sell dreams with this reform,” adds MoDem deputy from Finistère Erwan Balanant. In this context, getting more than a million people out on the streets twice in a fortnight, “it’s not that it doesn’t change anything, but it encourages us to pose the debate in a different way”, affirms the deputy Horizon Paul Christophe, in charge of pensions in his group. Clearly, the argument now focuses on the objective of balancing the pension system and, ultimatelyon the rescue of said system.

“The Orientation Council says it well: if we do nothing, we will indeed return to equilibrium in 2070. But after having accumulated 1,000 billion euros in debt! “Explains the deputy from the North. This is the “there is no alternative” strategy, which seems more effective to some and should have been used from the start: “Perhaps we made a mistake by not talking enough about balance, it was necessary to dismantle the arguments on the non-necessity of the reform”, thinks Erwan Balanant. Exit then the argument of justice? “Wanting to perpetuate the pay-as-you-go pension system is in itself a measure of justice”, sweeps Paul Christophe.

Those who fight back

It’s a bit like the “Darmanin tactic”. Sunday, in an interview at Parisian, the Minister of the Interior went there particularly strongly against the left. The Nupes “is only a scam” which “only seeks to mess with the country” with its strategy of obstruction. That’s not all: basically, the Nupes and LFI represent “this lazy and bobo leftism” which would have a “profound contempt for the value of work defended by workers and the popular classes”. “He is speaking the truth,” supports Prisca Thévenot, RE deputy for Hauts-de-Seine and spokesperson for the Macronist group.

For her, the left plays the “rotting of the debate because they are not ready, they have no arguments”. The Ile-de-France MP is not one of those who consider that the battle for public opinion is already lost. “There is a big noise that is taking place, orchestrated by LFI and Nupes in general. But we are only at the beginning, the substantive debate arrives and the Nupes refuses it. »

And if of course “the mobilization must be heard and not despised”, the deputy invites us to look elsewhere: “Yes, among those who take to the streets, there is anxiety and anger. But why don’t we talk about all the others? »

Those who still believe in pedagogy

This is probably more the case of a Gabriel Attal, in charge of Action and public accounts. From Tuesday evening, at the end of the second day of mobilization, the minister who is rising assured in the 20 hours from TF1 that it was “never too late to talk to each other”. “The trade unionists are doing their job”, explains, very calmly, the MoDem deputy Philippe Vigier, leader of his group on pension reform. “You have to do it, the pedagogy, he says. This reform is so complicated! “For him, there is still time to counter the “lies” of the left: “We are lying by saying that the caregivers will leave at 64 years old. Yes, everyone will have to work a little longer, but there are advancements in this text! On the arduousness, on the 1,200 euros minimum [pour les carrières complètes uniquement]even if it has been a little trivialized…”

But is the pedagogue’s position still really tenable when the Prime Minister herself announced on Sunday that the decline in the starting age to 64 was “non-negotiable”? “When she says that, Elisabeth Borne does not give up pedagogy, believes the deputy of Loir-et-Cher. But we must repeat that it is not 64 years old immediately in 2023, it will be progressive. “Moreover, the MoDem proposes a review clause on the reform in 2027. “We are not holding a bounded course, but with stages. The unions just want to cancel the reform…” Problem: the abscess of fixation, it is indeed the 64 years. Because that, for once, is very simple to understand.


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