‘We will topple any Left-wing PM you appoint,’ Le Pen warns Macron

French president opens talks with hard-Right in struggle to resolve eight-week government impasse after snap election

Marine Le Pen has warned Emmanuel Macron she will topple any Left-wing prime minister installed to end the current period of political deadlock.
France entered its eighth week without a prime minister and government on Monday after the president called snap legislative elections last month.
On Friday leaders of the Left-wing coalition, which won the most seats in the July vote, said they were “extremely satisfied” with the first round of the president’s consultations to form a new government.
Their choice for leader, Lucie Castets, said she was “ready” to govern.
On Monday it was the hard-Right National Rally’s turn to hold talks with Mr Macron.
Though Mr Macron has since ruled out Ms Castets as a prime ministerial candidate, Ms Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the leaders of National Rally (RN), said they would still refuse to work with the four-party Left-wing coalition.
“The New Popular Front, with its program, movements and the personalities who embody it, today represents a danger to public order, to civil peace and, of course, to the country’s economic life,” Jordan Bardella, the president of the RN, said.
“Not only do we want our voters to be heard and respected, we also want to protect the country from a government that is fracturing French society.”
Speaking to a crowd of reporters outside the Elysée, Ms Le Pen and Mr Bardella threatened to submit a vote of no confidence should the president name a prime minister from the Left, which they deemed a “danger to public order”.
Over the weekend, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical Left party France Unbowed (LFI), which along with the Greens, Socialists and Communists, make up the New Popular Front (NFP), proposed withdrawing from the coalition if it meant the NFP assuming power. Mr Mélenchon is seen as too radical and unpalatable by many of those in the Centre and on the Right.
But Ms Le Pen said her party would oppose a Leftist government, with or without the LFI, whom she described as the group’s puppetmaster.
“It doesn’t change a thing,” she said on Monday. “The New Popular Front is led by France Unbowed, and the most brutal, the most violent, the most excessive, the most outrageous, is the one who imposes the law … it’s France Unbowed, it’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon who’s really in charge of this party.”
In a letter sent to members of Mr Macron’s Ensemble grouping after the president’s meeting with the RN, outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal also criticised Mr Mélenchon’s proposal for an NFP government without France Unbowed, calling it an “attempted coup de force” masquerading as a “sham of openness”.
“What Jean-Luc Mélenchon is proposing is to remove a name from the store front, but change nothing inside. We cannot accept this,” Mr Attal wrote. “A motion of censure would therefore be inevitable, and it would be the direct responsibility of a camp that considers it can govern alone, and does not wish to compromise.”
He then called for a meeting with presidents of parliamentary parties, without France Unbowed and RN.
Mr Mélenchon responded by turning the accusation round on Mr Attal.
“Attal accuses me of a ‘coup de force.’ But I’m not fooled. I’m just a pretext for another operation,” he tweeted. “… In short: Attal pushes Macron out the door. If ever there was a coup de force, this is it.”