ARE WE in the last days of the Emmanuel Macron presidency in France? With Macron ordering his newly resigned Prime Minister to have another go at forming a government which the latter has already said he won’t lead, before the former ‘does what he needs to do’, that’s one interpretation of what might happen next. The collapsing clown car of French government has already seen several former Macron loyalists implausibly emerge from its back seat to try to distance themselves from the flailing President. The custard pie in the face is surely not far off now.
It all reportedly started with a private meeting between the centre-right politician Bruno Retailleau, part of the official parliamentary opposition to Macron but incorporated into the last government as Interior Minister, paying a visit to the recently appointed PM Sébastien Lecornu late on Sunday afternoon. Insiders say that Retailleau, who turned up unannounced, wanted to hear who Lecornu was planning to appoint and to drop a few names of people from his own party, Les Républicains.
Lecornu apparently gave Retailleau a few names but failed to mention a big one, that of Bruno Le Maire, the man most closely associated with the bottomless spending spree of the covid years which has brought France close to financial ruin. Le Maire, having failed as Minister of the Economy to bring the Russians to their knees, as he’d promised in March 2022, instead doing that to France’s own finances, was to be placed in charge of the Army, where doubtless he’d try to do the same militarily, with similar disastrous results for his own nation. Otherwise happy to be the crutch keeping the Macron presidency hobbling along, this was a political comeback too far even for the toadying Retailleau, who declared on X that he would be pulling his party out of the government coalition.
Lecornu, who had blathered about a ‘clean break’ only three weeks ago when appointed PM by Macron, had not only chosen Teflon man Le Maire but a dozen other failed members of the previous government, including former PM Elisabeth Borne, former Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and former Culture Minister Rachida Dati. By Monday morning it was clear that the recasting of this farce with the same actors was not going to fly, and a smirking Lecornu popped up on TV to announce that the ‘conditions were not right’ and that parties were putting ‘politics before country’, so he was throwing in the towel. And then it was ‘that’s lunch!’ where Lecornu took all his disappointed appointees (minus Retailleau) off for a fancy meal to break the news, while Macron made himself visible to cameras wandering around the streets of Paris on his own, deep in thought, like the old ham he is.
As the day went on, things really started to go off the rails, with the usually quite reserved Marine Le Pen, who has publicly said only that she was after new parliamentary elections, suddenly pushing the line that a new presidential election could be the thing, as she noticed other opposition politicians on her side of the political fence pushing for it. That certainly puts her more in alignment with the people, who, according to a Le Figaro poll published on Monday evening, are massively in favour of Macron resigning, with just 30 per cent not thinking it a good idea. Certainly more than the 60 per cent who think new parliamentary elections would help more.
By the evening, even one of Macron’s longest allies, and a former PM himself, Gabriel Attal, was on national TV news saying ‘like many French people, I no longer understand the President’s decisions’. All the same, the loyalist will be helping Lecornu in his search for a solution to present to his master in a couple of days. The rats haven’t quite all left the sinking ship, but they’re certainly having a hunt around for the lifejackets.
So what of Macron himself? Will he dissolve Parliament and call new elections? Will he resign? Without wishing to hedge any bets, neither of these is a very attractive option for him. It is common currency amongst government sympathisers to say that his calling an election in 2024 caused this chaos, as he gave up a working parliamentary majority. Repeating this will only shrink the loyalist number of MPs further and make the likelihood of a Marine Le Pen majority greater. For the man who told the French he didn’t want to ‘hand the keys of power to the far right in 2027’ before dissolving Parliament last year, giving Le Pen another crack at a parliamentary majority, or even the presidency, would be a humiliating defeat that would not win him the admiring glances and lucrative contracts from the other members of the globalist elite he so covets.
The most sinister way out is gently going from being a far-fetched conspiracy theory to a not-to-be-ruled-out possibility. Within the Constitution of the French Republic is an important clause, number 16. Previously used only to deal with an attempted coup during the Algerian War in the 1960s, it allows the President to assume full responsibility for governing in a declared state of emergency. While the political ramifications of such a move would be spectacular, Macron has clearly never enjoyed himself more than when, in March 2020, he was able to look gravely into a TV camera and repeat the words ‘we are at war’ before ordering everyone to stay at home. Whether the emergency is keeping the far right out of power, saving the economy or even dealing with all these weird drones said to be appearing over European skies, it’s important not to underestimate the determination of a man like Macron to remain in power. The next few days will reveal how far he might be prepared to go.
