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August 30, 2024 - 1:00pm
The most important number in French politics is 123. It’s the difference between the number of deputies in the National Assembly who support President Emmanuel Macron (166) and the number required for a majority (289). So far, this has proved to be an unbridgeable gap. Eight weeks on from the last set of legislative elections, France is still without a prime minister.
The largest alliance in the assembly — the Left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) — tried to put forward its own candidate for PM, Lucie Castets. But to much online fury, Macron rejected her this week, provoking accusations that he is mounting a coup. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical La France Insoumise (LFI), wants the President impeached, and communist chief Fabien Roussel is calling for massive protests.
These tactics won’t work. First of all, there’s nothing in the French constitution that says that the largest parliamentary faction gets to choose the prime minister, unless it’s large enough to command a majority. What’s more, Castets lacks popular backing: the latest polling only gives her 26% support compared to 41% for caretaker PM Gabriel Attal.
As for impeaching Macron, that would require a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, which the Left won’t get unless it unites the entire opposition, including its Right-wing enemies. Strikes, marches and riots won’t work either. Macron survived the Gilets Jaunes protests so he’s likely to survive the NFP’s tantrum.
Even if France does burn again, that would only give Macron a pretext to invoke Article 16 of the constitution and rule by presidential decree. It would be a last resort, of course, but he could use another constitutional weapon: Article 49, which allows important legislation to be passed through the National Assembly without a vote.
With a budget that needs to be approved in the next few weeks, this would stop the hung parliament from paralysing his presidency. But there’s a catch. The Article 49 powers are specifically bestowed on the prime minister, which is why Macron desperately needs one in place to do his bidding.
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SubscribeIf a country needs to change its constitution frequently, something is wrong. One of the reasons France keeps changing its constitution is because of the deep divisions in French society going back as far as we like. External factors can exacerbate those tensions, as happened in the 1930s leading to 1940, but states that are solid and secure don’t look for excuses. In many ways the French State was invented by Napoleon and remains a top down structure, which might work most of the time but not all of the time. Macron’s coup, if we want to call it that, has as much to do with globalisation interests V national interests (a problem not just confined to France) as with the inherent tensions within the French State and French society.
The obvious winners seem to be the two extremes in French politics. The mess is of Macron’s making. He encouraged tactical voting behind the NFP and now he refuses to respect the result of the election. If he calls another election in 2025, expect the vote for both the NFP and the RN to rise, leaving Macron justifying his posture on an even smaller number of seats.
How long until those on the outer fringes of the left and right realise they have many policies in common – and decide to work together on just those. Perhaps this is the main reason Macron is refusing to allow either of them to hold the Prime Minister role. Interesting times indeed.
A good point. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblent Nationale (RN) party is always being described as far/extreme right, whatever that means exactly. In fact, apart from immigration policy where she wants to reduce incompatible, third-world immigration. The RN’s economic policy is more closely aligned with the left.
The governing class is desperate for us to believe their narrative that somehow ending open borders will lead to pogroms and concentration camps – but, so far as I can tell ‘far right’, nowadays just means anti-immigration right across Europe.
The fault lies with Hollande for standing down before a 2nd presidential term and appointing Macron to deal with the problems Martine Aubry was causing in the Parti Socialiste. After that, a vulgar left-liberal and conservative bloc emerged in full light of day to ruin the Vth Republic.
The only way I see this resolving is by two pragmatic and brave leaders on either side of the moderate left and right to swallow their pride and somehow form a confidence of supply arrangement with macron.
It is clear from the results of the two recent elections in France: Voters want change. It is profoundly undemocratic to engineer “solutions” that perpetuate politics which voters have emphatically rejected.
In so many countries in Europe, strange bedfellows have assembled to deny the voters’ will, and (inexplicably!) found themselves lose even more voters in the next election.
It will take pragmatic and brave leaders – but our pathetic clutch of legacy pols are none this.
It would be change and it would be democratic. A majority of the population do not want an extremism government.
The RN is in no way extreme. They are centrists on pretty much everything. They simply want to end the obvious disaster of Islamic immigration. That makes them sensible, and the majority of Europeans agree with them.
Surely it is more dangerous and u democratic to allow one fringe party whose ideals and policies are anathema to a majority of the population govern? The far left and far right do not hold popular support individually.
France is ungovernable. 4th turning will deliver both political and financial resets.
Unless they continue to be subsumed into the EU 4th Reich …
Paradoxically, keeping the hard left and right from power underwrites their popularity by preventing their supporters from seeing the failure of their policies in action.
Since France now resembles the Interwar IVth Republic, surely it’s time to lay the foundations for a VIth Republic where the French people can expect more than just a pseudo-appointed successor to Macron in 2027.
That said, petit Napoleon Macron would doubtlessly seek an unlimited tenure as President in a new republican constitution…