Macron’s centrist alliance no longer had enough seats in the National Assembly to impose its will. No other group, or likely alliance, was large enough to dictate policy to the President. The result: stalemate. Or so it seemed. Two months on, no grand coalition has been formed. But nor is there a complete deadlock. Fears of instant chaos and early snap elections have proved exaggerated. France, after more than half a century of presidential, top-down politics, has rediscovered the messy joys of parliamentary democracy and verbal brawling.

Despite having 39 seats fewer than an overall majority, Macron’s prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, has managed to push through a €44 billion package of measures to blunt the impact of inflation. She may lack political experience, but she has proved to be a more effective parliamentary operator than many had predicted.

However, nothing difficult or truly controversial has yet been attempted. Deputies have been asked, in effect, to give away goodies to their constituents, including extending the price ceilings on gas and electricity, and subsidies on petrol and diesel prices. The unpleasant, uphill part of Macron’s second term is about to begin. September will see street marches for higher wages, as well as strikes and protests against the President’s proposed extension of the French retirement age to 64 and tougher rules for employment pay.

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France is not a patient country: politics goes to the street more rapidly than in any other democracy. Macron’s opponents on the extremes of Right and Left now tell their supporters that his government is “illegitimate”. They say that the President does not represent a majority in parliament, let alone the country.

France is weathering the threat of Ukraine-war-generated stagflation reasonably well. Inflation is running at 6.1%, which is substantially less than in the UK and most other EU countries. Domestic power bills have been capped at 2021 levels or just above. Unemployment is still falling. But how long can Macron shield his nation from international inflationary forces? And what will it cost? Both the far-Left and far-Right are already pushing for the removal of sanctions against Russia. If Moscow cuts off EU gas supplies, the real cost of gas and electricity in France — and the cost to the state of subsidising them — will explode.

So far, some of the cost of France’s energy price gap has been concealed by imposing record losses on the largely state-owned power company, EDF. That cannot continue forever, even if the government carries through its plan to buy the remaining 16% of the company.

All this comes during a Sahel-like summer in which French forests burned and farmland across the country turned yellow. Yet Macron will struggle to rectify his patchy record on climate change in such a fragile economic environment. His government is due to present a grand strategy for moving to renewable energy next month: it will be dismissed as by the Left as too timid and the Right as too painful.

Macron knows that he is facing a winter of discontent. In a would-be Churchillian speech last Friday, he asked the French people to view their coming difficulties as “the price of liberty”. “I am thinking of our people,” he said, “and the strength of spirit they will need to… confront uncertainties, misleadingly simple responses and adversity and unite to accept that they must pay the price for our liberty and values.”

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In other words, the President hopes to frame the autumn and winter protests as a narrow-minded refusal to accept that the West is in a prolonged state of economic war with Russia; and that the war is as much about protecting the future of France and other Western countries as it is about helping Ukraine. For this strategy to succeed, Macron needs to be consistent. It was foolish of him to be seen riding a fuel-guzzling jet ski on his summer break, while asking the French people to put up with energy shortages for the greater national good.

Macron and Borne face this tangled cat’s cradle of crises in the weakest position of any French government in half a century. Apart from a brief period in 1988-93, every president since 1965 has had a clear majority in the lower house of parliament.

Much depends on whether Macron and Borne can continue to form majorities in the National Assembly on an issue-by-issue basis. The signs are not encouraging: the centre-Right Les Républicains, who have propped up the Macron coalition so far, have already warned that they will vote symbolically against next year’s budget when the Assembly resumes in October. Borne could use emergency powers to push the budget through, but that would trigger a vote of confidence.

The present Assembly is split four ways, with fissures and tensions within each camp — including Macron’s own. Les Républicains, successors to the parties of Charles de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, have been reduced to a rump of 62 seats out of 577. They have refused to join Macron’s centrist alliance — but have, however, supported the government in key votes, in return for Right-leaning shifts in policy, including a large, new breach in France’s 35-hour working week.

Members of the Left-wing alliance, Nupes (Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale), the second-largest force in the assembly with 151 seats, have voted systematically against the government — albeit with one or two exceptions. They shout insults and wave their arms a great deal.

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Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen’s unprecedented 89 deputies are under strict orders to appear calm and respectable. Some of the new Rassemblement National deputies find this discipline irksome. If Le Pen herself is absent, they too take the opportunity to hurl insults at Macron’s government. The RN has attacked the government on all its proposals but abstained this summer for fear of being seen to vote against inflation relief. Le Pen’s troops will not abstain this autumn and winter.

It’s clear that Les Républicains are the pivotal force in the new assembly, wielding power beyond their numbers. But they face an existential conundrum. They could either support Macron’s crisis-management policies and proposed reforms, giving him an against-the-odds triumph, or they could refuse to work with him and ensure that his second term is a failure. Some senior voices in the President’s camp are still hopeful that all or part of the centre-Right will agree next year to join a broader coalition. That is probably wishful thinking. There is a group of Républicains deputies ready to act as a rudder steering the government to the Right, on the economy, migration, and security. But others believe that helping Macron would destroy all hope of resurrecting the once dominant centre-Right and winning the 2027 presidential election. If they condemn the President to five years of muddle and drift, they say, they could bury Macronism and its would-be successors forever.

Much depends on who wins an internal election for Républicains party president in December. At its grassroots, the party is riven between its Macron-compatible, pro-European wing and the Macron-detesting nationalist-populists. The latter are almost certainly in the majority. The three leading candidates are likely to be Eric Ciotti, the Macron-hating, hard-Right deputy for Nice; the former European Commission Vice President, Michel Barnier; and a young, pragmatic deputy, Aurélien Pradié.

If Ciotti becomes the Républicains president, any alliance or systematic cooperation with Macron will be impossible. The Républicains parliamentary party might then split but that would not yield the 40 or so seats needed to create a stable, governing coalition.

By the end of the year, we will know whether the majority of the Assembly will support Macron’s flagship pension and employment law reforms. It will also be clear whether Macron and Borne can command ad hoc majorities to manage the triple interlocked crises of inflation, global recession, and war on the European continent.

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If he cannot assemble the support, Macron will face a career-defining decision. In his first mandate, his reform agenda was overwhelmed by the Gilet Jaunes and Covid. Should he now accept a place in history as the young President who promised a great deal and achieved little? Or should he take the risk of dissolving the National Assembly and calling a new election?

Nothing in recent French politics suggests that Macron could expect a better result next year. French politicians rarely gain popularity while in office. One poll at the weekend showed the President sinking to 37% approval while his Prime Minister rose to 41%.

With an energy and inflation crisis, stretching into next spring, it is not the most obvious time to call an election. Asking French people to vote to work longer is unlikely to be a winning hand. Yet Macron is a young, energetic, and impulsive man. He will not easily settle for four years of posturing, drift and domestic and international firefighting.

His Blood, Sweat and Tears speech last week can be read in two ways. It could imply that he recognises that his only role in the next four years will be crisis-management — to prevent a deeply divided France from falling apart. Or it could suggest that he sees the coming multi-layered crises as an opportunity to assemble a broad, consensual centre against the extremes of Left and Right. Some senior Macron supporters believe that he will be tempted by next June to call an election in which he would campaign — to quote his speech — for “unity in adversity”. I can only say: good luck with that.

I happened to be standing beside a young man distributing leaflets when Elisabeth Borne, France’s new Prime Minister, and several TV crews approached. You don’t see many TV cameras in Thury Harcourt, in the hills 30 kilometres south of Caen. You don’t see many prime ministers either.

The young man began to berate the PM. Why was she scared to debate with him in public, he asked? Madame Borne put him down politely. “I am very pleased to meet you and I hope that we’re all going to campaign nicely,” she said.

It was only then that I realised that the young man was Noé Gauchard, the local candidate for the Left-Green alliance Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale (or Nupes for short).

Madame Borne became France’s second female prime minister last week. She is running for election — for the first time in her long career as a public servant — in my home constituency, the sixth circonscription of Calvados. After becoming boss of the Paris Metro, after becoming a regional Prefect in uniform and white gloves, after becoming three kinds of minister during President Emmanuel Macron’s first term, Elisabeth Borne has decided that it is time to get herself elected.

You have to give her credit for that. She doesn’t have to be a member of parliament to be the PM in France. If she wins, she will have to resign the seat and allow her running mate to become the local MP. If she loses, she will have to step down as Prime Minister — not for any legal reason but because Macron has made that the rule for all members of his government who are running in the parliamentary elections on 12 and 19 June. So here, down my way, came an event which could only happen in France: a Prime Minister campaigning for votes for the first time in her life.

How would Elisabeth Borne, a classic product of the French technocracy, take to being a stump politician? She is a fiercely competent and hard-working woman, but is reputed to have little charisma. Her nickname when head of the Paris Metro was “Borne-Out (because she burned out her staff). “She is not a barrel of laughs,” one Macron ally says. “But, then again, government is not the Club Med.”

The Prime Minister spent 45 minutes at the Thury Harcourt Vide-Grenier (attic-clearance sale), which is an occasional opportunity for local people to exchange their unwanted rubbish for other people’s unwanted rubbish. You could buy Johnny Hallyday’s Greatest Hits, Volume 12. Or a casserole with no lid.

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I thought that, for a first-timer, she did pretty well. She came over like a hospital matron of the old school doing the rounds of the wards. She has a lovely smile, which is rarely seen on television. She listened for longer than was strictly necessary to complaints about high pump prices or Emmanuel Macron. She was able to connect with people — especially, it seemed, the women. She allowed selfies to be taken with children.

Borne made one beginner’s mistake, however. She didn’t buy anything. A practiced French stump politician visiting a market would always buy something. It doesn’t have to be Johnny Hallyday’s Greatest Hits Volume 12.

***

Borne’s mother was a pharmacist who came from Livarot, a little further east in Calvados. Her father was a Holocaust survivor and resistance hero who never recovered from his wartime trauma and committed suicide when Elisabeth was 11-years-old.

She was brought up in Paris and rose through the ranks of the French meritocracy. She trained as an engineer at France’s premier engineering school, Ecole Polytechnique, whose students — still almost all men to this day — have uniforms and ceremonial swords. She then worked, in increasingly senior roles, in the private offices of a series of Socialist politicians: the culture minister Jack Lang, the Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, President François Hollande, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe. She regarded herself as “of the Left” but never joined the Socialist Party.

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She was one of the first women to become a Prefect of a French region, in Poitou-Charentes. During the first Macron presidency, Borne was successively transport, environment and employment minister. She is credited by some (and blamed by the unions and part of the Left) for pushing through two of the most important reforms of the Macron era: the opening of the state French railways to competition and making the terms for unemployment pay tougher (but still more generous than most other EU countries).

Fast forward to Macron’s re-election on 24 April, and she is reported to have been his first choice as Prime Minister. He then spent three weeks looking at other options, all of whom were women. He had decided that, 30 years after the brief and disastrous term of Edith Cresson in 1991-2, it was time for France to have a second female PM.

Macron was torn between choosing a woman with proven experience in national government and one with deep roots in local or regional politics. He is reported by the French media to have almost made another choice, Catherine Vautrin, the centre-right president of the Greater Rheims area in eastern France. But several of his closest aides pointed out that Vautrin had once been a vocal opponent of the legalisation of gay marriage in France. Macron backed away rather than offend his supporters on the centre or the centre-left.

After three weeks, the President returned to his original choice: Elisabeth Borne. This stuttering process — the longest delay before the appointment of a new PM since the present doubled-headed French government system began in 1965 — reveals two things: one about Macron, the other about the changing status of French Prime Ministers.

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The first is that Macron, who appears confident, even arrogant, can be indecisive, especially when it comes to choosing people. He is often torn between doing what he thinks will be the right thing and what will be the clever thing.

The second is more profound. It used to be that the Prime Minister was a disposable front-bumper or a fuse to protect the President from being damaged by random events — especially during domestic crises. All the same, the PM used to have a certain amount of autonomy. They were often senior politicians from the President’s own ideological family. They ran the country while the President presided.

But since the seven-year presidential term was reduced to align with the five-year parliamentary term from 2007, the role of the French Prime Minister has become uncertain, even problematic. The semi-detached status of French Presidents is no longer tenable in the age of Twitter and 24-hour TV news. If the President leaves too much to the PM, he is accused of being aloof; if he takes all the decisions, he is accused of being overbearing.

Macron is frequently accused of both. He resented the popularity of his independent-minded, first Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe. He had a much better working relationship with his successor, the hard-working, unassuming but effective Jean Castex. Any French Prime Minister now risks being Prime Minister only in name. He or she no longer leads the majority party in parliament because French parties have all but vanished and have been replaced with permanent or shifting alliances.

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In theory, Borne — with zero experience as an electoral strategist — will spearhead Macron’s forces in the parliamentary campaign next month: the half-dozen parties and factions which make up his centrist alliance, Ensemble. The campaign will actually be led by a committee of  more experienced stump politicians with Macron (officially banned from campaigning as head of state) directing operations in the background.

All of which means that the French Prime Minister, whatever the constitution may say, has become a kind of Super-Chief-of- Staff or a Grand Vizir. Castex was well-suited to that role. Elisabeth Borne — demanding, tough, intellectually impressive — should also be in her element.

But like her more successful predecessors, she has to find a way of connecting with the French without making Macron jealous. And she has to win her first election in the sixth circonsciption of Calvados. If my own little patch of France rejects her on 19 June, she will be the shortest-serving prime minister of the Fifth Republic. I suspect, however, that it won’t reject her. Macron came first in this area in both the first and second round of the Presidential elections in April. In any case, the words “Prime Minister” may be devalued in Paris but they still mean something in rural France.

In the Thury Harcourt market, I spoke to Patrick, 58, a local beef farmer and village councillor just after he had chatted to Madame Borne. “I was surprised,” he said. “She was easy to talk to and seemed genuinely interested in farming. But even if she is as dull and cold as people say she is, she would win. How often do you see prime ministers in Thury Harcourt? Never. It will be a great and wonderful thing for this area to elect a Prime Minister.”