Emmanuel Macron’s party in crisis after two chiefs resign saying it has run out of ‘new ideas’

Pierre Person, 31, MP in Paris for Emmanuel Macron's LREM party, has stepped down as its deputy leader

Credit: THOMAS SAMSON/ AFP

President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling En Marche party has run out new ideas, according to its deputy head and spokeswoman who both resigned on Monday night.

Hostilities erupted within the executive bureau of LREM, as the party is known, after deputy leader Pierre Person, 31, said in an interview with Le Monde that he was stepping down as the movement “no longer produces new ideas”.

“Is it able to face the new phase of [Mr Macron’s] term of office? Not as things stand,” he said. It was time the party stopped simply “copying and pasting” government decisions, he added.

LREM was created by the centrist Mr Macron in 2017 and went on to clinch a large parliamentary majority with a mixture of Left- and Right-wing MPs, half of whom were political novices coming from civil society.

However, his dream of turning it into a machine to build up grassroots support has so far failed, with the party faring poorly in municipal elections and suffering humiliating first-round defeat in six by-elections held on Sunday. None of its candidates managed even to qualify for the second round.

Mr Person, an MP with a Paris constituency, left the Socialist party in 2015 before becoming LREM’s deputy leader.

His departure came after party leader, Stanislas Guerini, refused to reverse a decision to postpone elections for a new executive bureau for six months until after regional elections, in which members fear a fresh electoral rout.

French President Emmanuel Macron's LREM party has run out of fresh ideas claims its number two as he resigns 

Credit: GONZALO FUENTES/REUTERS

After an acrimonious, three-hour meeting, he was joined by Aurore Bergé, party spokeswoman and standard-bearer of LREM’s Right-wing faction, who slammed the door, saying: “The malaise is deep. We no longer know who we are and what we stand for.

“The response cannot be to take the same people and start again.”

Party tensions have been exacerbated by Mr Macron’s swing to the Right, which has irked those who joined from the centre-Left. The desertion of dozens of Left-leaning MPs lost him his absolute parliamentary majority in May.

The 42-year-old ex-investment banker kicked off his presidency with business-friendly reforms, including making it easier to hire and fire, but has since enacted Left-pleasing social reforms from shoring up gender equality to fighting sexual harassment.

Since the start of the pandemic, he has all but frozen his reformist agenda and pumped tens of billions of euros of state money into generous furlough schemes while pledging not to raise taxes.

Most believe he intends to stand for re-election in 2022 on a centre-Right platform given that his political support base is largely Right of centre. He has notably ramped up pledges to get tough on crime and is due to make a much-awaited speech on tackling “separatist” radical Islam.

While his party remains in the doldrums, Mr Macron is faring better, with the latest opinion poll putting his approval rating at 38 per cent — hardly huge but considerably higher than his two predecessors, François Hollande Nicolas Sarkozy, at this stage of their five-year terms.