Laurent Saint-Martin, the valiant Macronist soldier of an not possible finances | EUROtoday

Politics is such a small world. This Monday, November 25, Laurent Saint-Martin finds himself within the Senate chamber going through Claude Raynal. One, the Macronist minister of public accounts, should defend a reasonably austere finances. The different, the socialist president of the finance committee, has, for weeks, not had harsh sufficient phrases towards the successive governments which “take from the poor to help the rich”.

Everything separates them? In public, everybody praises the opposite, and doesn’t hesitate to criticize their positions. “We don’t have many political affinities,” notes Claude Raynal. In the personal sector, the senator is none apart from the minister’s uncle, his mom’s brother. To assume that they fought on the identical aspect twenty years in the past…

The story of Laurent Saint-Martin and his uncle tells a part of French political life. While Claude Raynal remained a socialist, his nephew turned to Emmanuel Macron upon his accession to the Elysée in 2017, accepting his slide ever additional to the appropriate with out fully embracing him. Within a authorities led by Michel Barnier, member of the Les Républicains celebration, and marked by the arrows of the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, towards immigration and the rule of regulation, the “mister budget” stays the one of many final to say himself on the left. “The second left, social-democratic, social-liberal, yes, I still claim to be part of it”, he says to World, in an workplace of the National Assembly reserved for visiting ministers. An atypical positioning which has earned him approval from each the left and the appropriate, however under no circumstances ensures the vote of his texts in Parliament.

“He’s flawless”

In entrance of the senators as in entrance of the deputies earlier than, Laurent Saint-Martin seems as a valiant soldier despatched to the hearth on essentially the most mined floor of the second, that of the finances. Its mission: to regain management of a spiraling deficit. Which requires, to begin with, to have a finance regulation adopted for 2025. A problem, given the collected obstacles. Michel Barnier and Laurent Saint-Martin solely had two weeks to go away their mark on the venture left by Gabriel Attal and Bruno Le Maire. They delivered their copy ten days late than the authorized deadline.

In session, above all, Laurent Saint-Martin has been struggling for weeks with the absence of a majority among the many deputies, and with the divisions throughout the troops speculated to help the Prime Minister. In the National Assembly, the New Popular Front (NFP) succeeded in remodeling the Barnier finances from A to Z to make it an “NFP-compatible” textual content, supported by the left, criticized by the appropriate, and eventually rejected by a majority of elected officers. In the Senate, the place the dialogue begins, the environment appears much less hostile. But within the joint committee, there isn’t any assure {that a} compromise will likely be discovered. And that the minister is not going to fall with your complete authorities in a movement of censure.

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