France Votes to Oust PM: Locked Horns in Deadlock
Photo Courtesy: DG EMPL via Flickr
On 4 December, a vote of no confidence ousted French Prime Minister Michel Barnier in a decisive blow against President Macron. This outcome is all together less surprising when put into context.
In June, President Macron called a snap election. No single party out of the forerunners – the far-right ‘National Rally’, the left-wing broad-church ‘New Popular Front’ or Macron’s centrists in the Ensemble - were able to gain a majority in both chambers (142,180 and 159 seats respectively). This tight turnout was symptomatic of Macron’s bleeding votes to the fringes of French politics. According to journalist Alain Duhamel, ‘All presidents have been unpopular, even [Charles] De Gaulle’, but Macron’s self-presentation as the only bulwark against French political turmoil breeds ‘animosity and resentment’. It is for this reason that Macron is often parodied as a Napoleonic figure.
Macron is also felt to be unrepresentative. It is no surprise that this vote of no confidence came so early in Barnier’s tenure: politicos across party lines want to dismantle Macron’s ascendancy as soon as possible, to stand in good stead for the 2027 presidential election. They were granted the perfect opportunity when Barnier proposed his spending cuts and tax hike to resolve a budget deficit crisis. Barnier is a center-right Republican, so any tax hikes that failed to resolve France’s cost of living crisis were unassailable propositions for Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally. The vote of no confidence that followed was the first since 1962 and tantamount to a disastrous political fallout.
Macron’s resignation is being flouted as a tenable solution to this problem. But even if Macron resigns, no other party leader has a stable majority to pass legislation through the French assembly. To make matters worse, a new legislative election can not be held until next summer; there will be no partisan bloc shake-up until then. This stasis would be fine if France were not in economic bedlam. Since Macron’s first appointment, France’s public debt has increased from 2 trillion euros to 3.2 trillion euros and has grown a foreign trade deficit of another billion euros since 2017. For former French ambassador to the United States Gérard Araud, ‘Macron is now on the front line. The pressure for his resignation is growing. I doubt he will cave in’. Whether Macron will call an early Presidential election seems unlikely, it will involve amending Article 6 of the French constitution for the first time since 2000, and for Macron, an early election is simply a ‘political fiction’.
This episode in French political history may turn into an enormous boon for Marine Le Pen’s prospects ahead of 2027. Le Pen wore an all-black outfit to Barnier’s vote of no confidence, preempting the funeral of Charles de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic. Although Le Pen’s National Rally risks alienating wealthy donors in routing Barnier, it undoubtedly will win the support of the working-class members of her voter base, for whom inaction would be a betrayal. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Mathilde Panot’s New Popular Front will gain from this outcome as well: it demonstrates their ability to overcome Macron’s alleged ‘stolen election’. Whatever happens next in French politics, Barnier’s removal is both a consequence and cause of the needle shifting toward populism in not only French politics, but politics across the globe. Macron may have won the battle, but Le Pen or Mélenchon will win the war.