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Macron now risks losing control altogether

President Emmanuel Macron was tonight struggling to contain France’s biggest political turmoil in decades, grimly aware that the debacle was largely self-inflicted.

The moment of truth came after MPs voted to topple Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s short-lived government, with the far-right combining with leftwing parties in an unholy, anti-establishment alliance.

After an angry debate in the National Assembly, MPs voted 331 to 574 in support of the no-confidence motion, easily ousting Barnier’s three-month-old right-wing administration. It makes the suave 73-year-old the Fifth Republic’s shortest-serving prime minister – and the only one to have lost a no-confidence vote since 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president.

The result hands the president a quandary that not even de Gaulle faced: how to cobble together a government that can win the support of a fractious parliament, where the only issue commanding a strong majority is distrust of Macron himself.

Indeed, Macron has attracted so much bile that Paris has been buzzing with fevered speculation about whether he could resign. That is unlikely. He was in Saudi Arabia today, and in the hours before the vote appealed to MPs, saying, “It would be a vote of unbearable cynicism.”

His pleas were ignored. However, the way forward is far from certain. Under France’s constitution, Macron cannot call fresh elections until next July. The current parliamentary balance is so splintered that there is a risk no new coalition could be found. If so, Barnier’s government may have to continue in a caretaker capacity, with strictly limited powers, only dealing with ‘current affairs’ – urgent or time-sensitive tasks – but prevented from proposing long-term policies or passing new laws.

FILE - French President Emmanuel Macron, right, and Prime Minister Michel Barnier stand at attention during commemorations marking the 106th anniversary of the November 11, 1918, Armistice, ending World War I, at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. ( Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP, File)
French President Emmanuel Macron is facing a political crisis (PHOTO: Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP, File)

Meanwhile, France desperately needs to balance its books. Barnier’s downfall was over his €60bn worth of tax hikes and spending cuts aimed at containing France’s growing budget deficit. He warned of a financial and economic “storm” if the government collapsed. In recent days, France’s borrowing costs briefly surpassed Greece’s before the debt rallied. 

But the political fallout is potentially greater. Macron is in danger of losing political control altogether, as the parliament continues to defy him. On the European and world stage, the president already seems diminished, a far cry from the confident and implausibly youthful leader of just a few years ago, bubbling with energy and ideas.

Macron’s predicament dates back to last June, after the European Parliament elections when Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally performed twice as well as Macron’s centrist allies. Stung by the result, the piqued president immediately dissolved the National Assembly and called snap elections effectively asking the French if they were ready to stick with their choice in a more consequential vote.

The rash gamble backfired. Although the centrists did better this time, the National Assembly was split into three broad groups: the far-right, the centrists, and a four-party leftwing alliance, New Popular Front (NFP), which has 182 MPs in the 577-member parliament.

The NFP includes the far-left party France Unbowed (LFI), whose leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon loathes Macron as much as Le Pen. However, the alliance voted tactically in the second round last July to support the centrists in constituencies where they faced RN. This gesture might have led to Macron choosing a prime minister from the NFP ranks, but instead Macron turned to former European Union Brexit negotiator Barnier, a veteran conservative from the traditional right-wing Republican Party (LR).

Barnier led a minority government that only held on thanks to a Devil’s bargain with the RN, who abstained in the confirmation vote. But this effectively made Le Pen a kingmaker, with the power to switch sides at any time. It was a perilous proposition, especially with Le Pen herself facing the legal pressures of a corruption trial, which could disbar her from running for president in 2027.

Macron’s choice of Barnier also poisoned relations with the NFP, even though some of the bloc’s MPs – notably the Socialist Party (PS) and the Greens – are relatively close to him (Macron began his own political career as an economy minister in President François Hollande’s PS government).

The left’s sense of grievance and anger was on display in the debate before the vote. Boris Vallaud, the parliamentary head of the PS, said Barnier never even tried to speak with the NFP, while Cyrielle Chatelain, his Green party counterpart, said her hands “will not tremble” when it comes to voting for the no-confidence motion.

Macron may be correct in warning that their votes play into the hands of Le Pen and the far right, who will revel in the political chaos. But the president will also rue his own missteps that led to this fiasco.

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