So now what do we do?
President Emmanuel Macron is expected to name a new Prime Minister by the weekend.
His first, Edouard Philippe, lasted three years and 49 days. His second, Jean Castex, lasted one year and 317 days. His third, Elisabeth Borne, 238 days; his fourth, Gabriel Attal, 194 days.
Michel Barnier was deposed by the National Assembly last night after 90 days.
How long should we expect the new government to last? Answers on one side of the paper only.
Michel Barnier’s record – the oldest and shortest-lived Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic – may not survive for long. I expect that the new Prime Minister could fall sometime around early March, in the same way and for the same reasons.
In the meantime, we are entering a period of “peak France”. A damaging strike by public employees against the Barnier government went ahead on Thursday even though Barnier resigned on Thursday morning.
Farm unions are threatening to punish the 331 Far Right and Left deputies who voted to topple the government and the 2025 budget on Wednesday night – blocking the scores of millions of Euros promised to the farmers who blocked the country last January.
Marine Le Pen’s Far Right purports to be pro-farmer. She may about to be at the receiving end of the liquid manure treatment usually reserved for governments.
Politics is not just politics. We face the prospect of a series of “Russian doll” political crises deep into next year. If the 2025 budget is delayed indefinitely, it is not just farmers who will suffer. The ricocheting crises may spill out of the National Assembly and onto the street.
It is difficult to see what a new Prime Minister will be able to achieve which Barnier could not. As he told the Assembly just before his fall, a censure vote will not “magically” remove even €1 from the €3,000 billion of French debt. In the rambling, pre-censure speeches by the leaders of the Left and the Far Right the words “deficit” and “debt” scarcely appeared.
There was another, visually striking, moment in the debate. When Barnier ended his sad, angry and dignified speech, the central third of the hemicycle stood and applauded for several minutes. All the deputies to the left and right of them walked out of the chamber to vote to censure the government.
This three-way split between these mutually detesting blocs cannot change before new parliamentary elections. They cannot be called until July. There is no reason to believe that such an election – more likely to happen in September – will produce a different outcome to the chaotic, blocked result of Macron’s snap poll in June and July.
The divided parliament represents a divided country. The unrealistic, uncompromising attitudes of the radical Right and radical Left represent the same, populist, tear-it-all-down attitudes as the populist wave in the US, Britain and elsewhere.
Compromise and coalition have long been alien to the French winner-takes-all, presidential culture. Barnier appealed three months ago for a new approach but could not even resolve quarrels between the former enemies within his “central bloc” of Macronist and ex-Gaullists.
Many of the deputies in the Assembly are young and inexperienced. They believe they were elected to break things, not to mend them.
Even a political genius would struggle to find a way forward and reach agreement on a 2025 budget. There are not many political geniuses available.
Macron is under pressure to choose a new PM rapidly. He wants the crisis to be at least partially resolved before he welcomes Donald Trump and other world leaders to the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral on Saturday.
He also needs a new government to propose an emergency law to roll over the 2024 budget and prevent the French state from closing down on January 1st. He needs to appear decisive and in control to forestall the growing campaign by hard Left and Far Right for his resignation.
He is not used to making such decisions quickly and he may make a mistake. Barnier was his own man and pushed Macron to the sidelines of domestic policy-making. It would be a blunder to replace him with a Prime Minister who is clearly a Macronist. The Left and Far Right would accuse the President, with some reason, of ignoring the result of last summer’s election.
Macron does not have time to restart a long negotiation on a new coalition which would embrace the moderate parts of the Left. That will have to wait until the next crisis in the spring.
His choices are very limited. There is no second Barnier and, in any case, Barnier failed. Macron may go for a stop-gap, non-party political figure whose life-expectation in the Hotel Matignon would be limited.
He or she would be asked to push though the 2024 budget rollover before the end of the month (which will be easy enough) and restart negotiations on a deficit-cutting 2025 budget to calm the markets.
The Assembly would, in theory, have 70 days to consider a revised budget for next year. There is no reason to believe that a new PM could push any deficit-cutting budget through without using his emergency powers (as Barnier did) and being censured and toppled (as Barnier was). That’s why I foresee a déjà vu twin budget and government crisis in March.
Pressure on Macron to resign will grow. He will resist.
The outcome of the Le Pen corruption trial on March 31st may help or make things worse. Will she be banned from the 2027 presidential election?
Public opinion will gradually begin to grasp that 2025 is not 2024 and a rollover budget will hurt them.
Who will people blame? The government or the against-nature Left and Far Right coalition of “Non”.
What happens now? The political crisis, the worst since 1958, goes on...and on.
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