French President Emmanuel Macron (left) with US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House. Photo / Getty Images
Tanned after a short summer break in southern France, Emmanuel Macron has returned to Paris to face a political crisis largely of his own making.
Tomorrow NZT, the centrist French President will no doubt lose his sixth prime minister.
François Bayrou appears to be for the chop in a confidence vote no one believes he can win.
With yet another prime ministerial “fuse” blown, the question many in France are now asking is, how much longer can Macron keep his job?
Macron is not one to “abandon the battlefield”, his own spin doctor told the Telegraph.
But French politics has been limping pitifully since the French President called disastrous snap elections last year after losing European elections to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN).
These led to a near-unworkable hung parliament that has left him a virtual lame duck with a minority government at the mercy of the radical right and left in the National Assembly.
As the latest government is about to fall, the 47-year-old former banker is rapidly running out of road with two years to go before his second and final consecutive five-year mandate draws to a close.
Never have the storm clouds looked so ominous regarding his political future.
With markets breathing down its neck and debt spreads widening, France is facing economic meltdown unless it can pass an austerity budget to rein in the Eurozone’s worst deficit, set for 5.4% of GDP this year, by October 15. This parlous state is a humiliating blow for a man once dubbed “the Mozart of finance”.
Meanwhile, revolt is brewing via a viral movement called “Bloquons Tout” (“Let’s Block Everything”) that aims to shut down France on September 10.
A leaked Paris police note has warned of potential “violent actions, sabotage and operations against strategic sectors of the economy” in what instigators hope could kick off a fresh insurrection in the style of the “gilet jaune” (“yellow vest”) protests – this time against planned budget cuts.
Protesters have been discussing blocking train stations, picketing oil refineries, and walking out of supermarkets without paying.
“It’s a horizontal movement with no leader – everyone does what they want,” said an intelligence source, describing the anger as widespread with “meetings everywhere – in villages as well as big cities”.
“The images will not be pretty,” said one police official.
Beyond that, unions have called for mass demonstrations on September 18.
Against that backdrop, Macron’s Pyrenean prime minister dropped a political bombshell last month by calling a vote of confidence over his cost-cutting budget.
Deeply unpopular, it plans to slash spending by €44 billion ($87b) via a raft of measures, including the abolition of two bank holidays and a tax increase for pensioners.
Those who deny the gravity of the national debt of €3.3 trillion or 114% of GDP are like passengers on a “boat that is holed and taking water and who say, ‘It doesn’t matter, we are still floating’”, the Prime Minister, a former Latin and French teacher, intoned.
The hour was grave and the country faced a “catastrophe” similar to the financial crisis that hit Britain under Liz Truss if his plans were rejected, warned Bayrou.
The French finance minister claimed that the International Monetary Fund may even need to be called in if things carried on in this way.
After blaming boomers for failing to do their bit to balance the books, Bayrou then berated the opposition, saying he had been unable to negotiate over the summer because “they were all on holiday”.
It was hardly an auspicious start, and it took no time for two of the main opposition groups, Le Pen’s RN and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed, to announce they would offer no such confidence. Le Pen called for fresh parliamentary elections, Melenchon for Macron to resign.
But the coup de grace came from the Socialist Party, which could have saved Bayrou but whose leader, Olivier Faure, said his decision to vote against the confidence motion was “irrevocable”.
“The only word I’m waiting for him to say now is ‘goodbye,’” Faure said.
With even his allies calling the move “political suicide”, Bayrou refused to water his plan down, insisting that “the fate of France” was at stake.
The problem for Bayrou is that most French do not see it that way, according to Jerome Fourquet, the head of opinion at Ifop, the French polling institute. A poll out last week placed debt in seventh among national priorities this week, with health, law and order, and education the top three.
The French, he argued, remain in “Peter and the wolf” denial as to just how bad the country’s economic situation has become.
Every time politicians cry “wolf”, they point to a raft of public spending sprees, the latest during the Covid pandemic, as proof that the state can keep giving.
But now “the wolf is at the door” as long-term borrowing costs jumped to their highest level since 2011 last week and sovereign bonds approached the levels of Italy, usually dubbed Europe’s economic laggard.
Observers say Bayrou’s probable departure and the fall of the Government will leave Macron politically weaker than ever and with rapidly narrowing options.
These are to reinstate Bayrou, which is deemed highly unlikely; to name a new prime minister who stands a chance of avoiding a fresh no-confidence motion; or to call fresh legislative elections in an attempt to break the deadlock.
If all else fails, there remains one other “nuclear” option – to step down early and call a presidential ballot.
With Bayrou effectively toast, Macron convened the coalition cabinet’s chiefs from the centre and right and urged them to “work with the Socialists” to form a new government. Faure has said he is at Macron’s “disposal” to become the new leader of a left-leaning cabinet and potentially “compromise” on his party’s soak-the-rich plans.
However, if Macron picks a Socialist prime minister he risks losing the support of the centre-right Republicans party, which is in the current government.
Rather than a Socialist, Francois Patriat, the head of Macron’s Renaissance group in the French Senate, said the plan is to find someone “who can talk to the left without losing the right”.
Potential reported candidates for taking up the “poisoned chalice” are Catherine Vautrin, the Health and Labour Minister, Sebastien Lecornu, the Defence Minister, and Gerald Darmanin, Justice Minister. All hail from the right.
Other names include Eric Lombard, the Finance Minister, Yael Braun-Pivet, the parliamentary Speaker and Stephane Sejourne, the European commissioner.
Whatever new prime minister Macron pulls from his hat, many insiders predict he or she will not last long. One ministerial adviser said: “There is no scenario, no new casting choice that can resolve the crisis”.
In that case, he may have to call fresh snap parliamentary elections, according to Edouard Philippe, who was Macron’s prime minister during his first term.
Philippe said: “If nothing happens, if no government can prepare a budget, how do we resolve this question? Through a dissolution [of parliament]. I think it is quite inevitable.”
Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s former right-wing president, concurred and predicted these would take place “within a few weeks”.
One party clamouring for such a vote is RN. Le Pen, 57, and Jordan Bardella, 29, her young protege and party president, called for “an ultra-rapid dissolution” this week after meeting Bayrou “as a courtesy”.
Bardella said: “The sooner we return to the polls, the sooner France will have a budget”.
Polls suggest fresh elections could boost RN, already the single largest opposition party, in the National Assembly. The latest survey gave RN 32% of the vote with another 5% for Eric Zemmour’s nationalist Reconquest party.
Despite polling forecasts suggesting another hung parliament is the most likely outcome, RN believes it can achieve a workable majority with allies and a few right-wingers.
In the most recent elections, RN fell foul of the left and centre which desisted in three-way run-offs to keep its candidates out. This time, it is convinced the “Republican front” will not prevail.
However, Macron has ruled out further parliamentary elections. Last time, these weakened his hand and led to chronic instability.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, an RN heavyweight MP, criticised the President for failing to call fresh elections, calling him a “big coward who chooses the easy option, either the policy of cheque writing or playing for time”.
“In this case, he’s buying time” by refusing to return to the ballot box and limping on without a majority, he said, adding: “It’s typical of the centrist French elite that believes it is the only one fit to govern. At least British elites accepted Brexit, even if it p****d them off. They got on with it. In France, they’re convinced there’s no alternative.”
The President, he said, had sorely miscalculated by assuming Le Pen would shy away from bringing the government down to save her skin; in theory, she cannot run for a new parliamentary seat owing to her provisional electoral ban following a recent corruption conviction.
Her party is looking into a technical way of getting around that ban, citing a recent decision by France’s constitutional council suggesting a ban could be dropped if it threatens “voters’ freedoms”. RN insiders have said Le Pen is keen to test this legal challenge in parliamentary elections in the hope it may clear the way for her to take a fourth run at the presidency in 2027.
Her party only offered Bayrou a stay of execution because, by law, it had to wait a year before fresh legislative elections could be called. Now this is possible, it would systematically vote to bring down any new “Macroniste” government.
In light of this, some moderates warn the only option may be for Macron to leave before the scheduled end of his second term.
Valerie Pecresse, a former Republicans presidential candidate, said that if no agreement was reached on “non-censure of the government”, the only option would be to “return to the polls”.
Doubting that a second dissolution would bring “stability to the country or combat political fragmentation”, she said “an early presidential election would be desirable”.
Jean-François Cope, the former Republicans leader, was more blunt. “Emmanuel Macron should accept that the French people don’t want him anymore. The future of the country is at stake,” he said.
A poll by the Elabe institute for BFM, the news channel, found that 67% of voters wanted Macron to resign.
But speaking to the Telegraph, Sibeth Ndiaye, Macron’s spin doctor in his first term, ruled this out.
“Given the psychology of the man, I don’t think he will ever envisage this option,” said Ndiaye, who has left politics. “He will try all other solutions that will allow him to avoid this. He is not one to desert the battlefield.”
As Macron fiddles, social discontent is brewing apace.
Some say Bayrou chose the September 8 date for the confidence vote to take wind out of the Melenchon-backed “Bloquons Tout” drive to shut down France two days later.
However, judging by the latest intelligence note, that strategy does not appear to be working. “The prospect of the government’s resignation has strengthened the protesters’ determination,” it reads.
Beyond “Bloquons Tout”, another viral movement is swirling around France. “C’est Nicolas qui paie” (“It’s Nicolas who foots the bill”), started as a meme of a fictitious white middle-class millennial who complained of being milked to pay for the French benefits system while others, notably pensioners, lived off the fat of the generous nanny state. Also in his sights was Karim, the Muslim-African immigrant whose life was supposedly financed by Nicolas.
“They are two sides of the same coin, left and right,” said Fourquet, who has theorised France’s ungovernability in various acclaimed books.
“Whole swathes of France are dependent, not to say addicted to state spending, which accounts for 56% of GDP. Any attempt to reduce this sparks protests.” Hence “Bloquons Tout”.
“On the other hand, Nicolas is more of a right-wing critique from the worker who feels fleeced by high taxes to pay for welfare and pensions,” he added. “Both are symptoms of the exhaustion of the French social model.”
To remedy this, he said, the left says “take it from the rich and big business, the right and centre say slash state spending to ‘slim down the mammoth’, and the National Rally says the culprits are immigration and the EU”.
Fourquet added: “Each has its magic solution, which generally entails not asking the average French person to make any effort whatsoever”.
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