The centre holds, twice

On Wednesday I previewed key votes happening last night in first the European and then the French parliament. The results, I think, are good news on both fronts.

In Strasbourg, European Union prime minister Ursula von der Leyen, from the German centre-right, was re-elected with a more comfortable margin than expected. She won the vote of confidence with 401 votes; 284 MPs voted against, with 35 abstaining or not voting, although since she needed an absolute majority there is no real difference between the two. For her first term, in 2019, she had managed only 383 votes in a larger parliament of 751.

Unfortunately voting is by secret ballot – one of several ways in which the EU departs from a normal model of responsible government – so we can’t say for sure exactly where her support came from. As it happens, the three groups that she mostly relies on (centre-right, centre and centre-left) have exactly 401 seats between them, but that’s basically just coincidence. We know that (like last time) she leaked a significant number of votes from within those groups.

She had a choice of whether to look primarily to left or right for the extra votes she needed: either to the Greens, or to the Eurosceptic group ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists). A tilt either way was likely to scare off the other, and she chose to go with the Greens. It’s believed that most of their 45 MPs backed her, and that despite earlier hints, few if any of ECR’s 78 did so.

And then later the same day France’s centre-right made a similar choice. The French legislature was choosing its Speaker, not a government, so a secret ballot made more sense. The system is that up to three ballots are held: on the first two, an absolute majority is required for victory, but if that fails, then a plurality on the third ballot is sufficient. Candidates can drop out between rounds, but they don’t have to – there are no eliminations.

On the first ballot there were six candidates. André Chassaigne, a veteran Communist who was the candidate of the left New Popular Front (NFP), led with 200 votes; Sébastien Chenu, of the far-right National Rally, had 142 and centrist incumbent Yaël Braun-Pivet had 124. Then there was a large gap to the centre-right’s Philippe Juvin with 48, and two dissident centrists, Naïma Moutchou and Charles de Courson, with 38 and 18 respectively.

Moutchou withdrew after the first ballot and her votes flowed solidly to Braun-Pivet. More significantly, so did Juvin, and the combination put Braun-Pivet in the lead, 210 to Chassaigne’s 202. After the second ballot de Courson withdrew as well; his votes scattered more, but Braun-Pivet kept the lead and was elected with 220 votes, against 207 for Chassaigne and 141 for Chenu.

So for all its talk of “winning” the election, the NFP has failed its first big test. It’s a significant victory for Emmanuel Macron, showing that he can win the co-operation of the centre-right and improving his chance of being able to sustain a prime minister of his choice. It also completes the split in the Republicans: the minority who followed party president Éric Ciotti have formed their own group, called simply À droite (“On the Right”), and voted solidly with National Rally, while the larger group, now called the Republican Right, is willing to work with Macron on at least some occasions.

Despite that, the president at some point will have to reach agreement with elements of the NFP in order to form a new government, and it’s not clear whether Braun-Pivet’s victory has made that easier or harder. But at least it seems that in both Strasbourg and Paris there is still room for a centre-right that sees its place with the defenders of democracy and not with its enemies.