France faces months of political instability as government collapse approaches

In another surprise, France will be without a government again on Wednesday.

Michel Barnier, appointed by Macron after July’s inconclusive parliamentary elections, is facing a no-confidence motion over the budget that he is almost certain to lose.

Left-wing lawmaker Alexis Corbiere said in Parliament this afternoon: He got out of here. ”

The arithmetic is unforgiving for the former Brexit negotiator, who is now in a position to end his career as France’s Fifth Republic’s shortest-lived prime minister.

He has led an unusual government from the beginning. It is a minority government whose survival depends on the indulgence of its enemies.

In the National Assembly, Barnier could rely on his own conservatives and Macron’s allies. But this centrist coalition is vastly outnumbered by the left-wing coalition on the one hand and Marine Le Pen’s populist right wing on the other.

And when these two forces combine, as in Wednesday’s censure motion, they are too numerous and are bound to oust Mr. Barnier.

This is a crisis waiting to happen, but it has been postponed until now by the long procedural haggling over the 2025 budget.

Shortly after taking office in September, he proposed a budget promising to cut the deficit by 60 billion euros (£49 billion), which he said was necessary to satisfy Brussels and restore the country’s fiscal health. .

But since he lacked a majority, his budget was marred by opposition amendments from both the left and the populist right that abolished taxes and introduced more spending, changing its essential nature.

After a number of back-and-forths in the conservative-dominated Senate and Congress, Mr. Barnier returned with a new document, a document to be exact. This is because there is not only the entire budget but also the social security budget.

However, that version remains unacceptable to the opposition.

Marine Le Pen could have rescued Mr. Barnier if she wanted to, making a series of new demands, including scrapping a new tax on electricity and reinstating fully indexed pensions.

Barnier made concessions – quite a few, in fact. But that wasn’t enough. And now Le Pen plans to pull the plug.

Mr. Barnier and his supporters are focused on only one useful argument: the scenario of chaos.

They said that no responsible party leader would want to plunge France into the uncertainty and instability of another government crisis.

Does Marine Le Pen really want to be responsible for the inevitable financial market turmoil, rising borrowing costs and accompanying spending cuts?

Her response was that the warnings of doom were exaggerated and that no catastrophe would occur. Strictly speaking, France may not have a budget (there will be none if Barnier is sacked on Wednesday), but the system will be up and running. The constitution allows things to be controlled for a while by government ordinance.

She’s right up to a point.

If Mr. Barnier is ousted, he will likely remain in power in an interim capacity while Mr. Macron (who has been unfavorable to Saudi Arabia this week) searches for a replacement.

That could take weeks, as it did in the summer after Macron suffered a crushing defeat in an early election and Gabriel Attal served as interim president until September.

In the meantime, a special law could be passed to transfer the 2024 budget to 2025 so that civil servants are paid and hospitals cover heating costs. The new government would eventually pass a retroactive “fix” budget to put things right.

But the bigger picture is much more serious.

The initial political crisis triggered by President Macron’s dissolution of parliament in June has been exposed as the chronic disaster it always has been. There are no “fixes” for Barnier-type “consensus-building” negotiators.

Mr. Barnier was the best the president could offer. And if Mr. Barnier fails, it shows that the situation is truly out of control.

New elections cannot be held until July. A stable government is unthinkable. Some say the only answer is for Macron himself to step down. Until now, it has been considered a political fantasy.

But how much more is France prepared to do?