A political storm isn't enough to put an end to old habits. On Friday, August 23, President Emmanuel Macron is meeting with the leaders of his coalition at the Elysée Palace as part of his consultations prior to appointing a new prime minister. The table should be set for a meal at 1 pm, in the Salon Murat, where the president has made a habit of regularly inviting party leaders from his camp, along with a few leading ministers, for working lunches.

The format will be much the same as many meetings that have punctuated life at the palace since 2017. The Elysée's staging of this event is intended to illustrate the stability of the "presidential camp" around its leader Macron, in the face of the left-wing bloc, which is advancing united under the banner of the Nouveau Front Populaire. But it is hardly an illusion, given that the balance of power within the self-proclaimed "central bloc" was turned upside down on the evening of the legislative elections on July 7, 2024.

As has been the case since he was appointed prime minister in January, Gabriel Attal will be seated opposite the president, in accordance with protocol. But he is invited as the president of the parliamentary group for Macron's Renaissance party, not as the resigning prime minister, against a backdrop of great tension between the two men. Their relations have been cold ever since Attal distanced himself from Macron's decision to call early elections and later positioned himself to be elected head of the group, against Macron's wishes.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Edouard Philippe and his Horizons party "would have preferred" not to be received jointly with their partners from Macron's coalition, a source in Philippe's entourage said, believing that "their political bloc was dissolved at the same time as the Assemblée." But they intend to consult "individually" with the future prime minister, when he or she is appointed and "starts a new cycle."

There will be no shortage of contentious issues to discuss at the lunch. At the presentation, on Tuesday, August 13, of Attal's "action pact," his advisers insisted on the "challenge of arriving at a common platform" with Horizons and the MoDem, the two main parties allied to Macron's Renaissance. Both rejected such a project. "If each bloc makes its own platform with its 150 or 200 votes [in the Assemblée, out of 577]... sorry, but that's not the point," said the president of the MoDem group, Marc Fesneau. "There's no point," agreed his counterpart for Horizons, Laurent Marcangeli. "We are distinct political parties."

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