Yves here. When the French government just past was formed, experts anticipated that it would be weak and unstable, and that France might even prove to be “ungovernable.” Marine LePen’s Rassemblement National won a plurality in the first round of parliamentary elections. Its opponents worked together to have candidates withdraw in key districts so as to increase the odds that Rassemblement National would not win enough seats to form a government. But the increasingly unpopular Emmanuel Macron is a not-dislodgeable President, in office until May 2027, and lacks the political capital to make any messy coalition succeed.
Hopefully France-savvy readers will weigh in on this piece. One obvious lapse is its failure to mention military spending as a big part of France’s budget problems, which was the immediate trigger for the budget collapse. Even Professor John Mearshimer, hardly a France expert, saw fit in a recent talk that the obvious way to alleviate the budget fight would be cut arms expenditures, since lowering social spending would trigger more third-rail reactions. Rassemblement National and some of the leftist parties are NATO/Ukraine war skeptics. It seems highly likely that French voters generally would prefer lowering weapons spending first. But the US and NATO have succeeded in capturing many key political figures, starting with Macron, as well as a disproportionate share of the pundit-sphere.
This piece argues that Barnier forced the crisis by the way he formulated the question that led the government to fall, and put the ball in the Rassemblement National and leftist parties’ court. But that is not how the Twittersphere sees this. They put the blame squarely on Macron, as in he owns the crisis.
France will run on caretaker basis, with Barnier still in place. But no new legislation can be enacted until a new government is formed. It took Macron nearly two months to identify Barnier as an acceptable PM and get him approved.
So in a worst-case scenario, is Macron so selfish that he would refuse to resign to allow early Presidential elections and keep France limping in caretaker mode? The Parliament seems bloody-minded about forcing Macron out.
This is over my pay grade, but it seems if this stalemate persisted for much more than a month, at most two, Barnier might decide it is too unseemly to keep propping up this corpse. I would assume if the standoff continued and Barnier were to resign, Macron’s position would become untenable. But could he still hang on without even a caretaker PM?
By Simon Toubeau, Associate Professor, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. Originally published at The Conversation
France’s shortest-lived government has fallen in a vote of no confidence triggered by a dispute over now-departing prime minister Michel Barnier’s budget.
The vote was led by the leftwing populists La France Insoumise and was supported by vote from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in an act that Barnier called a “conjunction of opposites”.
As Barnier warned, the situation is grave: France faces a difficult financial reality, and government instability and institutional paralysis will only exacerbate the problem. As President Emmanuel Macron moves to replace Barnier, everyone involved, from government to opposition, should consider how they arrived at this situation.
It was the persistence of the competitive and majoritarian instincts of France’s politicians that engendered this crisis. They should now accept that only a change in this kind of culture will help France out of its predicament.
These instincts were evident from the moment Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called early parliamentary elections in June, following his party’s poor showing at the European Parliament elections.
Anticipating that the RN might win an outright majority in the National Assembly, based on its results in the first round of elections (where it secured 32% of the vote), rival parties devised a joint strategy to stop it. They created a “republican front” that brought together parliamentarians from the far left, the centrists that make up Macron’s base and the centre right.
Parties in the alliance entered an electoral pact between the first and second rounds of voting, withdrawing their candidates where it would enable another to prevent the RN from winning the seat.
It was this tactic that meant that, after years of steady growth in support, the RN narrowly missed being in office for the first time. It also deprived France of a majority and created three political clusters in the parliament of roughly equal size, each one incapable of governing alone.
But while Macron’s group was content to partner with the others to keep the RN out of power, these noble sentiments evaporated when it came to governing. The economic ideology of each party was too different for them to find common ground. The centrists instead formed a minority government, a manoeuvre made possible by Macron’s centrists pleading with the RN to abstain during the government’s vote of investiture to ease its path.
Brinkmanship
While the RN enjoyed its new role as kingmaker, it didn’t hesitate to maintain its own competitive instincts when dealing with the ratification of the government’s budget – the cause of the current crisis.
The budget Barnier presented to the parliament was tough: €60 billion (£50 billion) needed to be found to correct a yawning deficit and to tackle a colossal public debt. To the government’s credit, it tried to spread the pain evenly (though not equally) across the board through a mix of tax increases and spending cuts.
To pass the budget, a compromise would have to be forged between the government and the RN. But here again, a strict majoritarian logic was at play.
The RN felt it wasn’t being listened to, and accused the government of being closed to dialogue. In that respect, the RN was correct. Barnier himself claimed to be willing to listen but not to negotiate.
Knowing it was the key to ratifying the budget, the RN drew its red lines and issued its demands, focusing on the measures that would be most immediately felt by voters. It wanted to suspend the re-introduction of taxes on electricity, and a U-turn on proposed cuts to reimbursements for medical prescriptions. It also called for an immediate indexation of pension payments.
The government conceded, first over the electricity prices, then over prescriptions, until Barnier finally decided that was enough. The government could not go further without derailing its plans to restructure public spending, and without losing face to blackmail.
And this is essentially what the whole exchange was about. The RN’s demands were also an act of retribution against the centrists and a reminder of its past threats to bring the government down.
Barnier is a seasoned politician with an acute sense of the game to which he was being subjected. So rather than put the budget to a vote in the National Assembly, he chose to make the vote one about the “responsibility of the government”. To do so, he cited a clause in the constitution that allows the government to pass a law without a parliamentary vote.
He did this knowing that the opposition parties’ only option to stop him would be to call a vote of confidence and bring down the government. Such a motion was brought forward by the leftwing New Popular Front group and supported by the RN.
Why would Barnier imperil the survival of the government in this way? It was a continuous display of the competitive and majoritarian logic, to put the ball back in the RN’s court and force it to confront the risks that its own behaviour carries.
What Happens Next?
The RN now has to navigate the unchartered waters into which it has pushed the country. The government has fallen, but fresh elections can’t take place until July. A technocratic caretaker government will take over in the meantime, leading to paralysis in the French political system.
But this paralysis has rattled credit markets and increased the price of borrowing for the French government. This is a problem for the government but it is also a problem for the RN if the electorate perceives it to be responsible.
Many of the RN’s core supporters have an anti-system attitude. They oppose the government and always will because it is part of an establishment.
But the RN will never win office, and certainly not the presidency, by relying solely on this core base. It needs support from moderate centre-right voters, including those with economically liberal inclinations, who prize economic stability above all. Alienating them is not an option.
As Barnier had intended, the budget dispute has highlighted these internal tensions and harmed the RN’s prospects.
The RN’s most likely tactic in response is to try to shift the blame back onto the government in the hope that Macron can do nothing else but resign. Marine Le Pen is waiting in the wings.
The French problem is DEBT rather like USA
I believe 10% French National Debt is accounted for by SNCF state railway. It also has one of the most expensive health systems on earth
Like U.K. France has around 6-10% Defence Budget devoted to nuclear forces largely SSBNs and SSNs
The Fifth Republic is over because Gaullism last found expression in Jacques Chirac and is now splintered. Macron was the Banker Boy like Pompidou from House Rothschild and Macron is a project of Bernard Arnault
Macron must fall
De Gaulle fell in 1968
The basis of Frebch society is gone. It is ludicrous that a 1905 Law nationalised Church property but Mosques are funded by Saudi Arabia and Christians are subjected to Macron‘s homosexuality with the Paris Olympic spectacle
It is very frustrating to have you make comments of such uneven quality. Your good ones are more than offset by way off base ones like this.
US debt is nothing like the debt of any Eurozone state. The US creates its own currency. It can generate too much inflation but it can never involuntarily go bankrupt. Eurozone member states are vastly more constrained as currency users.
The general issue with deficit spending under neoliberalism is industrial policy is a bod word. Deficit spending that prioritizes activities that generate significant GDP growth do pay for themselves. US infrastructure is so in need of upgrades that many many projects would generate $3 in growth for every $1 spent.
The cost of healthcare in France is way below that of the US and roughly on par with Germany, Switzerland, and Japan in percent of GDP terms. Importantly, France is regarded at delivering top notch care, so superior bang for the euro. And in PPP per capita terms, it’s not even in top 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
Hallmark of 5th Republic was to strengthen the executive power of the President ie de Gaulle and make sacrificial lambs of Prime Ministers
The Foreign Minister for example rakes his orders from the President directly since he controls Foreign Policy and same with Defence
It is in effect a hybrid of the British parliamentary system and the US system and probably similar to the modern Russian Constitution.
This one really isn’t that complicated. The people have had enough! Continuing to produce a substandard living, general anxiety, continued reduced improvement (or even stability) for the masses, etc. is a global phenomena. The Neoliberal Order of “serve the elites at any cost” has gone too far. This is happening across the globe. My question is what is the end game.
In my view there is no way to both preserve the enrichment and continued entitlement for the elites and pretend to be populist (which includes regularly bailing them out in our series of financial crises) without stoking further unrest.
This is not an inherently anti-Trump comment, but let’s be clear that he made series of specific populist promises that the elites will hate. If once in office he only delivers tax cuts for the wealthy and accedes to Musk’s potential massive reductions in social spending, which seem to include reductions in things like CHIP and Medicaid, while increasing defense spending, etc., no amount of going on Fox or sending out on-line posts telling people how great things are is going to work.
To quote the (truly) great Who lyric: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”.
Not gonna work.
Which is not to say that Trump won’t give it a good hard try. His populist promises are mostly fake and always were. Anti-lower-class government cuts to support more pro-upper-class tax cuts were always where his heart is. Musk and Ramaswamy are Trump’s kind of people.
Trump supporters will keep supporting Trump as long as they can bear the pain. They may even accept the abolition of Social Security if they can be assured that Social Security will also be abolished for all the people who voted for Harris.
The very “extreme centrist” Macron talked yesterday to the nation talking about some “anti-republican front”. He doesn’t admit any mistake and will keep himself in the position until 2027, barring unexpected events i guess. He also says than “many did not understand him but the elections were necessary”. He will try again to find someone in the hope that the RN will allow the new incumbent to govern. IMO the new government would have to follow by most RN rules if it wants to last.
Prognostication: messy stuff.
The author really has it in for the RN and seems to want to blame them for the whole mess but that should be laid at the feet of Macron, not the RN. He called a general election on his own without telling most of his cabinet and big surprise, got hammered. In that election he convinced the left to get into bed with him but after the election screwed them over and gave out government ministries to his centralist buddies. He was the one that selected Barnier who said he was willing to listen but not to negotiate. Wasn’t he the Brexit negotiator? Now he is out because he tried to slip the budget through the back door and make the parliament irrelevant. No wonder the left and right came together to take him down. If he thought that this dodgy maneuver would put the ball in the RN’s court, the French people saw through it and saw who was really responsible for this mess. One thing I do wonder. Would this budgetary mess have come about if France had not spent and sent all those billions to the Ukraine? Is this implosion of France due to blowback from this war?
To take a slightly different tack from Yves, the author refers to Barnier accepting some tax increases to solve the budget problem, but leaves us in the dark as to how much he was willing to tax elites and what opposition groups think about that option. There must be some sentiment along the lines of “we keep our pensions, you lose your chateaux,” broadly held on the Left and among some segments of the RN. Is this where an unspoken version of Kalecki comes in, is there some ill-defined threshold at which “everybody knows” elites will pull a Depardieu and move their euros out of the country? Articles like this which fail to address that question make things easier for elites because they imply they are being reasonable rather than holding a gun to the head of the economy, aka the 99%.
@Rev Kev – one quibble, in that it was the other way around for getting into bed with the left to save his skin. The Left made the mistake of not joining together for the first round and split votes allowed the Far Right and Right and (alleged) Center Macronisties to take more seats, mostly to the advantage of Le Pen’s RNs (while the other lost seats). Macron was invited to join the left to not fight against each other to stop the RN, and he dithered until finally giving in, convincing those of his group who stood no chance to drop out of the 2nd round – thus, the left have the largest minority in the National Assembly, which normally should have meant that they would have a say in who became Prime Minister. They recommended a number of potentially good people, but he choose from the Right with the tacit agreement of Le Pen (a move to save face while acting unchastened). Macron really has a hard-on for the Left who wouldn’t support his demands to increase work hours, and stop the effort on higher taxes on high earners and stop attempts at regulating the salaries of CEOs when he was in the Socialist government.
The article is pretty much one sided. Why is it RN’s fault? Le Pen and Melanchon toppled Barnier together. One year without elections and with lame duck governent ? So what? Normal in Belgium and the country still exists. Question is whether this was Macron’s June 2024 strategy. Does this situation give him more personal power? Anybody having an opinion?
Because RN is a more acceptable and easier target than France Insoumise. If the author talked about the latter, he’d have to talk about what provoked the left’s backlash beyond handwaving the problem away by saying the parties’ positions were too different. The piece’s underlying position is less anti-RN than pro-Macron.
A few remarks from a French reader :
On the budget crisis :
First of all, military spendings were not the cause of the budget collapse. While we did vote for a wasteful and unecessary increase of our military budget, it has only reprensented 2/3 billion per year since the start of the war in Ukraine.
The most immediate cause was however related to Ukraine, it was the massive subsidies and hand-outs distributed by the governement to soften the soaring energy prices. These amounted to more than 80 billion euros in the past 2 years.
More structurally, the Macron governement has pursued a policy of massive tax cuts both for private companies and the middle class which has drastically unbalanced the budget for years. The most important of these cuts being the “CICE” instaured in 2012 by Hollande and pursued by Macron. This measure alone lost the state 264 billion euros in the last 10 years and continues to cost between 20 and 30 billion every year. To that you can add almost 60 billion euros of tax cut since 2017, both to the middle class and the rich.
So while the war in Ukraine is definitely the trigger of the current crisis I would argue that more than a decade of tax cuts is the main culprit here.
On the political crisis :
I would venture to offer an original take. Most pieces you will read in the foreign press about the current crisis will underline the role of the Rassemblement National in the current situation.
I would argue the center left is the overlooked factor here.
Macron has been hoping for a long time to cannibilize what remains of the left as he did during his first successful presidential run. He has been elected by left and center-left voters both times he ran on an “anything but Lepen” campaign very reminiscent of what the democrats have done with Donald Trump in the US.
His main issue right now is that after having been abused and betrayed for the past 7 years, the Greens, the Socialists and their voters are not too keen on allying with him anymore. A new generation of younger politicians in their 40s like Olivier Faure or Marine Tondelier have taken over these parties. They understand that their carriers depend on giving their voters at least a bit of what they were promised. They allied themselves with the “radical” France Insoumise and have adopted a more uncompromising left wing stance.
If they had supported the governement, Barnier would not have fallen. But such support would have been political suicide for them.
The France Insoumise has wiped out the moderate left in past elections and they will easily absord their disatisfied electorate again if they give in. This powerful left wing alternative is putting immense pressure on the moderates to take some sort of stance against Macron.
There are still many older green and socialist politicians whose carriers are over which would prefer to abandon their electorate and support the governement. This is the natural instinct of these Blair-like “left-wingers”.
But these people have led their parties to electoral disaster after electoral disaster and so far they are in the minority in the green and the socialist parties.
Right now Macron is exercising maximum pressure on this moderate left to give up on their alliance with the France Insoumise, rally him and betray their voters once again.
If he succeeds, we will likely have a governement in the coming weeks. If he doesn’t, and the new generation of moderate left wing politicians holds on, the political chaos will continue.
Please do not straw man what I wrote. I never said the military spending caused the budget crisis, but part of remedy would be to prioritize it in spending cuts. However, NATO members are all talking up the need to increase spending in light of the near certainty that Trump will reduce/end support for Ukraine (leaving the overcommitted EU to try to fill the void) and also cut NATO funding.
Some of the high electricity pricing in the EU resulted from very peculiar mechanisms that put the pricing way above the actual economics. This was discussed at length in late 2022 during the price spike. It was so convoluted that only pretty expert sites acknowledged that; the MSM was content to get hysterical over the rise and the impact on businesses and therefore jobs. It’s fallen well off since then. I am not sure the pricing mechanism was fixed but the degree of the crisis was due to this peculiarity. This is awfully reminiscent of Enron gaming electricity prices in California, except here the driver seemed to be badly chosen mechanisms then behaving badly, as opposed to manipulation. That does not mean the government expenditures were not necessary at the time or that they will be all that much lower…just that that period included an exceptional spike.
France also suffers knock-on effects of the weak European economy as its biggest industrial states, Germany and Italy, were the biggest Russian gas users.
I appreciate your later observations. You did manage to get off on the wrong foot. Please take more care in the future.
I am not a native speaker and I apologize if I sounded agressive or manipulative in my answer, this was not my intent, it’s just how I interpreted this sentence :
I simply did not believe that military spendings were “a big part” of the budget problem. I fully agree that they should be reduced in priority over other state expenditures and that increasing them in the current situation is both outrageous and useless.
As for the role of the European electricity market you are correct.
I am well aware of it like most French people are. It was actually discussed at length in the French MSM because France’s electricity is almost entirely nuclear and most politicians acknowledged that the price hike was caused by this european mechanism.
The governement decided to smooth the price increase by subsidising energy massively which played a big role in our current predicament but the RN and the France Insoumise actually argued that we should withdraw from this european mechanism. It was a big talking point during the european elections.
I see my drafting was not entirely clear and I should have provided some backup. Military spending may have been kept out of the line of fire in terms of the current budget fight. But France had increased its military spending in 2024, contributing to the deficit growth. From Politico in February:
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-will-reach-nato-defense-spending-target-in-2024/
The seven-year planning law may have meant that (most? all?) of the defense spending was treated as an existing commitment and outside the current budget fight.
Interesting. Not one mention of the Communist party, Melenchon nor the alliance and the gains made by the left.f Focus is only on RN.
It’s a decent survey of the immediate origins of the crisis, but in a sense that’s the easy bit. If it had not been the budget it would have been something else. The problem goes back to Macron’s stupidity in calling an election in July which produced three blocs each incapable of forming a government.
However, this morning there is an important new development. Olivier Faure, the Socialist Party leader, went to see Macron and offered a coalition between his party and the Centre and Right, provided that the Prime Minister was “of the Left” and that “mutual concessions” were made. With the addition of the Greens and the Communists, who have also been making accommodating sounds, this would produce a bloc of 266 deputies according to instant calculations, which could get over the hurdle of 288 seats to produce a parliamentary majority with some independents. You may reasonably ask why the Socialists and others voted against the government yesterday if they are prepared to join it today, and the answer seems to be twofold.
One is that that they are hoping to have the same kind of veto over the choice of Prime Minister that the RN had, which means getting rid of Barnier first, and creating confusion from which they can profit. A PM of “the Left” will not be Faure, and significantly poor old Lucie Castets, the sacrificial victim of a few months ago, seems to have been dropped. But an elderly plausible “Leftist” ‘(perhaps Cazeneuve) might fit the bill and enable things to go forward.
The other is that Macron is clearly not going to resign, as his belligerent performance last night showed. And I think that the rest of the NFP is getting fed up with Mélenchon’s fixation with trying to drive Macron into resignation so that he, Mélenchon, can replace him. Predictably, Mélenchon is furious with Faure for this apparent treason and has taken to the airwaves to say so. So we are seeing what looks like the start of a recomposition of the Centre and Left in France.
Thank you, Aurelien.
Further to the bit about “three blocs each incapable of forming a government”, according to one poll this week, this awaits us in Blighty: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/blow-for-keir-starmer-as-poll-puts-reform-uk-ahead-of-labour-for-the-first-time_uk_6751c1b5e4b01129dffa92a5. When I saw Reform overtake Labour, I thought of the AfD overtaking the SPD in Germany.
The developments you describe sound a lot like the compromise with the “Blair-like ‘left wingers'” described by Bolivar above. If so, it would seem to be more kicking the can down the road without really addressing the underlying structural or political problems. And would their increasingly disillusioned constituents accept such a “solution”?
We will see. I don’t think Faure has a chance of getting anything out of Macron and his inept visit to the Elysée will ostracize even more a PS that has a tiny national base now. Macron said in his speech that the program he began will continue. Whether you like it or not, LFI and RN are the strongest political forces in France right now. A red/brown alliance would bring it all to a halt. For me, that was the most significant aspect of the no confidence vote. The RN voted for LFI’s text. No one is emphasizing how important that was.
Starmer and Reeves are imposing austerity in Britain even if they still have the pound sterling. But there will be no imminent collapse of UK gov’t as a result of budget woes unless Reeves insists on her concoction of it being in a monetary blackhole.
Macron’s gov’t will probably not have been in this bind if they ditched the euro and reclaim their own French franc. Sweden and Denmark have an opt-out clause from the euro and still maintains their own krona.
Ditch the Euro !!!!!! Mitterand extracted the Euro from Kohl as price of Reunified Germany to subvert Bundesbank. That is French supremacy with Lagarde at ECB. Of 4 ECB Presidents 2 have been French
Without Euro France would collapse as Bond yields spiked. France is going to veto Mercosur even as vdL flies to S America to sign it because French farmers do not want S American beef.
There is no way to resolve France – like U.K. – it will require a dictatorship for 20 years. It requires societal re-engineering and expropriation of excessive wealth. It is wealth inequality that has destroyed European Social Democracy
I will not approve any more reader-misinforming comments through. You need to stop saying things that are flat out wrong. I don’t have time to waste debunking them.
Member states cannot leave the Euro without experiencing massive economic costs. We discussed this in gory detail in the context of the Greece bailout crisis in 2015. I suggest you read those posts carefully if you intend to opine on this matter again.
Any country that tried to leave would see massive bank runs as soon as word got out. People who had any assets in banks in that country would move them to an account in a bank not in that country to escape forced redenomination into the new currency, which would be sure to depreciate rapidly.
It takes about a year to design and print a new currency and reconfigure ATMs and get the currency out to them (the bare minimum six months to design and print was widely acknowledged). That is from someone who managed ATMs at one point of his bank career and still has hands in that area.
It would take a bare minimum of three years, more like five to six, to do the coding for electronic use. This is not even remotely just a matter of the in-country banks. You have to get banks all over the world, and critically networks like Visa and Mastercard, to code for the new currency. That begins with applying to the ISO to get a code. Banks in that country will almost certainly have to code to operate on two currencies (euro and new currency), since they will probably have to in the end to offer dual currency accounts. That also entails massive redesign down to customer statements and interfaces.
I do not know the terms of French debt, but in the case of Greece, most of it was subject to UK law, which meant it could not be redenominated to say a new drachma. So if the new currency fell in value (as is pretty much guaranteed), the debt burden would greatly increase in % of GDP terms. I would assume that the French debt is ultimately subject to ECJ determination and similarly cannot be force converted by France. Even if not, the economic contraction resulting from the banking system collapse would still greatly increase the debt burden in real economy terms.
Yes, France will likely get a ‘technocratic’ caretaker government, run by a de-facto tyrant parachuted in direct from the banking industry. We’ve seen this movie before. For a lickspittle running dog whore to wealthy financial interests like Macron, really, what’s not to like?
It had been pretty clear right from the first Macron government what he was up to.
Significantly, his last-but-one government, led by the colourless Elisabeth Borne at a time when Macron could still muster a majority, invoked the same procedure that Barnier did for the budget no less than 23 times — about every fourth week on average.
That aforementioned procedure enables the government to put an end to the discussions about a draft bill in the parliament by requesting a vote of confidence in the government. If successful, the gambit means that the government stays, and the law is approved without further delay or alterations.
I suspect that a number of deputees relished the prospect of finally being able to overthrow the government of a president whose mode of governing is to box through the “reforms” he wants to have implemented.
Following the collapse of the government, Macron gave a nationally-televised speech yesterday evening devoid of content that could best be described as doubling down on his own catastrophic, anti-democratic, insane policies.
By now this has become the SOP of the ruling classes in the Collective West.
Failing proxy war in Ukraine? Double down.
Genocide in Gaza? Double down.
Self-inflicted harm from a trade war with China? Double down.
Electoral loss against the world’s worst candidate? Double down.
Martial law doesn’t work? Double down
WW3 on the horizon? Double down.
For the past year, the political class in France has shared but one goal despite bitter disagreements: to isolate and criminalize any organized political force in the country that would be capable of articulating the connection between the genocide in Gaza, the proxy war in Ukraine, and domestic issues like the weaponization of anti-anti-semitism and the severe police repression of ecological protesters, small farmers, and minority populations alike in France.
Despite their differences, the Greens and LFI represent that part of the Left in France that is still capable of articulating some or all of the above. The Socialists are in the process of discrediting themselves entirely. The “center” no longer exists except as an entity designed to legitimate the policies of the far right while keeping the herd within the NATO pen.
“For the past year, the political class in France has shared but one goal despite bitter disagreements: to isolate and criminalize any organized political force in the country that would be capable of articulating the connection…”
Fascinating and important comment.
I bumped into your “anti-democratic”.
Of course it is. But France has never been a democracy, only on paper and for the masses. France is a republic, which means it is a country with a state that controls everything. It’s the first state in that sense, and a 19th century country that’s coming to an end (because we’re in the 21st century).
It’s an elitist system, a mixture of royalism and socialism, in the sense that it favours the elite and takes care of the unfortunate. But the system is flawed by the number of civil servants who can’t be fired or transferred without their consent. Then there is this huge network of “associations”: all these structures financed by the state.
The daily work of most of these people is to find a place to sit the organ with which they think. It is a gangrene that will cause France to collapse.
In 1876 republicans won a majority in the chamber of deputies to the great chagrin of the monarchist president Marshal Patrice MacMahon (duc de Magenta) who saw the chances of a restoration slip away. The following year the premier Jules Simon tried to reduce the powers of the president in order to forestall any monarchist putsch and seal the paramountcy of the legislature over the presidency. However, MacMahon did essay a coup, dismissing Simon and replacing him with the erudite former premier, the duc de Broglie. Elections to the chamber were held and the monarchists received a thorough drubbing. A desperate MacMahon replaced de Broglie with another monarchist, the comte de Rochebouët, who lasted for only a few weeks, resulting in MacMahon having to appoint another republican, Jules Dufaure. Senate elections were held soon after, which also resulted in a republican victory, and MacMahon finally resigned in early 1879, ending all attempts at a return to monarchy and resulting in an increasingly aggressive anti-clerical turn.
There are at least echoes of MacMahon in Macron’s recent behaviour. Wanting to keep neoliberalism in the saddle and wishing to forestall a turn to the radical right, Macron gambled and lost as surely as MacMahon. However, as with MacMahon, a decisive defeat in the parliamentary elections did not wholly discourage him. The appointment of Barnier (as of Attal) was as offensive to the bulk of public and parliamentary opinion as MacMahon’s preferment of de Broglie or de Rochebouët, and it has met with much the same end. The question is whether Macron will capitulate like MacMahon, or whether his messiah complex will lead him to try again, against all odds, to salvage something of neoliberalism from the wreckage of his plans – perhaps trying to split the PSF from the rest of the Nupes.
The events of the 1870s also occurred under the long and dark shadow of the massive indemnity which France had to pay to Germany following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, which greatly aggravated the fragility of the politics of the nascent Third Republic. The financial history of the 1870s also rhymes with that of today.
And who knew that the Fifth Republic would gradually metamorphose into the Third and Fourth? De Gaulle and Michel Debré must be spinning in their graves.
Fifth Republic was created to entrench Gaullism.
Indeed, but it was also bespoke tailored for de Gaulle, and most of his successors have struggled to live up to his measurements. Macron, like VDE and Mitterrand posed as de Gaulle at the outset, but it only made him look like the entitled yuppie that he is: Jupiter turned out to be a preening Narcissus. Certainly, de Gaulle did not intend an outcome like that of the present where the president seems emasculated and the legislature is hopelessly split, at least three ways. Ordinarily a split legislature would give the president an opportunity to play off factions against each other to enhance his authority, and it may well be that Macron’s self-deluded self-belief is such that he perceives that he can still play that trick, but such is the universal distrust for him, he may well be in for another rude awakening. Of course he does still have his domaine réservé in foreign policy and defence matters, which might encourage him in further grandstanding to deflect attention from domestic problems, but that has become significantly less valuable given the collapse of French influence in Africa (it was originally intended to give de Gaulle and Foccart a free hand in Africa) and how tiresome he is perceived as being in many European chancelleries.
So we are perhaps back to the interminable horse-trading of the Third and Fourth Republics in which the legislative leaders broker their own deals which the essentially neutered president merely ratifies. Macron might prove to be the new Lebrun or Coty.
Though I should add that Coty did prove to be broker in 1956 when he appointed Mollet, who was also ‘pro-European’, after the January elections of that year resulted in a three way split, with Mollet’s SFIO on only 95 out of 595 seats (not unlike Barnier now), compared with 150 for the PCF and 214 on the centre-right.
From the outside, this all may seem insane. The situation is due to how political parties work in France.
The US has a very frozen party system where the party bureaucrats are 99% in charge, and the candidates have to manipulate factions in these parties. The UK has a mildly flexible party system- people can start a new party and get some seats in Parliament, and get a little traction for their projects by horse-trading votes. France has a very unstable party system: you get to be President by starting your own party and building it up. All recent Presidents had to do this. While you are President, the other challengers are try to nibble away at your party. After you leave, your party becomes a husk.
Note that after you win, your party has to switch from being “hungry challenger” to “incumbent that stays on top of the heap”. I would guess that France’s Presidents have had varying success in this transition in political metabolism.
(Note: the author is a Yankee who read this all somewhere.)
Plus ça change…
Many of the points made above are accurate but they all miss the main point. Namely, the highly centralizsed French state is grossly overmaned, and hobbled by 19th century organisational structures almost worthy of the Russian army. That is what causes the budget to be so obese.
I am a retired management consultant, based in France for almost 60 years. I have seen the problem everywhere, for decades. I have discussed it for hours at a time with Enarques, who are the real managers of France. They refuse to believe than meaningful change is possible in their country. Without ever even trying to explain why.
Meaningful reform will take decades and no French President has dared to touch the sacred cows. Now, because of EU rules, the Enarques will have to.
Macron was elected in 2017 to build a coaltion around a moderate majority that does not support political extremism. His failure is due 100% to his own arrogance and dismal lack of the most basic political skills. So there will be political turbulence in France until somebody can plausibly propose what the majority wants and, if elected President, has the humility not to act like Louis XIV or Napoleon or de Gaulle.
this article doesn’t provide some important context, makes en error and ignores a key recent fact.
-> the error: RN is NOT anti-NATO. This was in the past. RN is aligned with NATO and in particular on war against Russia and whatever. The reason is very simple, contrary to AfD in Germany, RN has no spine, it is just opportunism. A couple guys are anti-NATO but not the head of the party. RN program is to increase the military budget.
-> important context:
– until now, RN has been mostly supporting economic and tax policies of the Macronists. They are both somewhere between ordoliberalism and thatcherism.
– Barnier government was formed thanks to some unknown terms between Macron and Le Pen. Macron must have baited Le Pen with something. RN U-turn was then drastic, as shown in the statements of RN deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy before and after the meeting Macron-Le Pen.
– Barnier government was anyway not legitimate, Macron has done what was never done: ignore the results of the elections. On this we can see that since the 2005-2007 refusal of referendum results by the EU establishment, it has been going worse and worse, basic intangible democratic rules are being dismissed more and more openly and just now in Romania in spectacular way with elections being cancelled because winner after first round is an anti-war guy. Populations all across EU are passive and ruling clans can do whatever they want.
– the constitutional clause used to pass law without parliamentary approval is article 49.3 and this is how Macron has been ruling since he is in charge
-> key recent fact: couple weeks ago Marine Le Pen got a procedure against her in order to make her ineligible for five years. Justice is not independent in France, it means it comes from Macronists. Very silly idea to lure and use Le Pen then stab her in the back in a try to get rid of RN after use. Or there is something else but what?
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Le Pen & RN may have censored the government as a warning.
But whatever, the debt has become too big, and since 2017 Macron has sold many industrial assets to US capital, including a significant part of the debt to Blackrock and similar financial predators, and otherwise has the Damocles sword of the Deutsche € over the head. No government will get out of this. France is going down the Greek way.
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now to comment on Yves Smith’s observations: “in a worst-case scenario, is Macron so selfish that he would refuse to resign to allow early Presidential elections and keep France limping in caretaker mode? The Parliament seems bloody-minded about forcing Macron out.”
Macronists will play on the competition among the political clans. They can success in baiting again RN, and betrayals inside NFP will work with Macronists and LR in order to blacklist LFI. Basically Macronists will buy what is left of “socialists (PS)” who are no longer social-democrats since long. Anyway the country can also go like this with ad hoc apparatchiks until nearest possible date for parliamentary election, june 2025. Belgium and Italy have often been run like this many times. Macron needs a prime minister just in order to have a budget draft passed for 2025. This is important and it is what Germany/EU is watching.
In fact it is not clear how decisions are taken. Alexis Kohler, Stanislas Guérini are instrumentals in the Macronist gang.
Nobody is talking about the serious problem of manteinance of French NPPs, nor I don’t know what the budget said about it. It’s not that problematic by now, but it will be and has all the potential to derail at any moment. France also has lost its access to Uranium ores, and NPPs are the backbone of the energy system, I don’t remember, but well over 50%, and in fact they provide electricity near all its neighbours (except Spain). French electricity was cheap, and, forgeting the new (demential) EU pricing rules, France has not any other possibility than rely on its nuclear system, we are going to a point where surely the only ones that can keep on this working will be Russia and/or China (the US simply won’t be able). The US has very similar troubles, but the US is far from being as dependent on it as France is.
I’m talking about it because my opinion is that the matter is needed to be discussed (by French politicians) and as far as I know nobody is doing it, apart from making some noise. And this is a problem that can finish all the other problems.
I think the biggest mistake in this article is to believe that the RN has a clear strategy.
This is not the case.
The ideological cement of their base is pure racism that identifies all economic problems with a question of ethnic purity. The leaders are totally aligned with neoliberal economic thinking, and in reality have no problem with NATO, or even with immigration that they want to use as a source of illegal labor. And of course they lie to their base on the subject, adopting any position that seems to be in the air.
To obtain 32% in the first round of the legislative elections, the RN actually took up a whole series of social measures that were proposed by the left-wing coalition (lowering the retirement age, taxing the rich, …).
Between the 2 rounds, the national polls that all gave the RN an absolute majority believed themselves capable of reneging on practically all the social promises they had made before. I can’t say that this is what made them lose, but whatever the case and despite all the predictions, they only came in 3rd.
Continuing to navigate blindly, the RN thought it was more interesting to support the Macron camp, which it did without a second thought.
But the political cost of this support has actually increased. The toxicity of Macronism has become such that today no political party will venture there, even the RN despite its racist cement.
And this is mainly what finally decided the RN to bring down the Barnier government, and absolutely not any question about the sustainability of the budget, something that in reality goes far beyond the intellectual framework of RN activists, including leaders.
We must not forget that this party is a solid collection of imbeciles of which only 3 are capable of speaking in the media (Jean-Philippe Tanguy, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella). The American Republicans and Democrats, like the other French parties, are no less populated by idiots, but they have more who can appear on TV.
So no, there is no RN plan, just a navigation by sight.