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Conversations with a dozen members of LREM, including MPs and local-level leaders and volunteers, made it clear that the movement understands the challenges that lie ahead. Like Macron, who talks often of making France a “start-up nation” capable of more ably and quickly responding to world challenges, LREM wants to keep the novelty of the movement alive and ensure it doesn’t lose its connection with its approximately 400,000 adhérents, or registered members. “How will we do [things] differently from what we just destroyed?” Martin Bohmert, a leader of LREM’s youth wing, Jeunes Avec Macron, asked. “Because our promise was to regenerate the political life, then we have to rebuild something that’s not the same.”
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Bohmert, the youth-wing leader, went further. He saw the movement’s role as a way of keeping Macron accountable to French voters and providing necessary reality checks along the way. Rather than serving as merely an outside extension of Macron’s vision, then, it would also imply a certain level of tension between the two. “The role we have is to be the guardian of reality for the government. We need to be there and telling them what’s not working, what the people actually want,” Bohmert said. “And when they do something and we feel it’s not enough, we need to actually tell them.”