“Barnier’s appointment was greeted two days later by large, angry demonstrations in Paris, Nantes, Nice, Marseille and Strasbourg, accusing Macron of ‘a denial of democracy.’ “
By Richard Price, Leyton & Wanstead CLP
On the one hand, Emmanuel Macron’s appointment of Michel Barnier as prime minister on 5th September ended two months of rudderless government following the elections to the National Assembly. On the other, it opened a period of unstable government and legislative logjam that could run as far as the next presidential election in 2027. Underlining this, Barnier’s appointment was greeted two days later by large, angry demonstrations in Paris, Nantes, Nice, Marseille and Strasbourg, accusing Macron of “a denial of democracy”.
Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly on 9th June and call for fresh elections surprised both his opponents and most of his supporters. It was seen as an attempt to face down the far right, while outmanoeuvring the left. Amid widespread speculation that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) could win a majority, it was the hastily formed New Popular Front (NFP) that did the heavy lifting, winning 182 out of 577 seats in the second round of the election on 7th July. Ensemble, the electoral front of Macron’s Renaissance party, was reduced from 245 to 159 seats, while the RN won 142 – nowhere near a majority, but an increase of 53 nonetheless.
The Fifth Republic’s 1958 constitution was designed to ensure a strong president with a stable parliamentary majority. Although France’s larger parties have frequently had electoral fronts with small satellite parties, the country has had very little recent experience of party-to-party coalition governments. It has only had nine years of “cohabitation” – during which the president faced an oppositional majority in the National Assembly – in the 66-year history of the Fifth Republic.
While the constituent parties of the NFP spent two weeks haggling over their prime ministerial candidate, Macron was putting out feelers, and on 23rd August called party leaders in for two days of talks, with the aim of drawing off the more centrist parties of the NFP, isolating La France insoumise (LFI), and attempting to form a centrist government with ex-Socialist Bernard Cazeneuve in the frame.
In essence, Macron wasn’t only seeking to exclude at all costs La France insoumise – the largest component of the NFP, which had recently won the election. He was inviting Socialists, Greens and Communists to break their election pledge to reverse his highly unpopular raising of the pension age – a measure forced through the National Assembly without a vote using presidential powers – and seeking a government prepared to carry through €25bn of cuts to reduce France’s deficit and not to increase the minimum wage.
None of this was recognisably “centrist”. Macron’s “neither left nor right” Third Way shtick of 2017-18 has given way to familiar centre right neo-liberalism, chipping away at France’s social model, seeking to monetise its public services and cracking down on immigration. Having before the election urged the left to join him in keeping the RN away from government, post-election, Macron repeatedly bracketed Jean-Luc Mélenchon with Marine Le Pen as extremists. CGT general secretary Sophie Binet warned: “Macron’s strategy of demonising part of the left in the same breath as attacking the extreme right has undermined our ability to respond to the far right.”
So while the left has come under sharp criticism for not uniting behind a plausible prime ministerial candidate, it’s clear that Macron was negotiating in bad faith all along.
The focus of his attention was the Socialist Party. Yet it was Macron who was the principal author of its electoral disasters in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections when Benoît Hamon and Anne Hidalgo scored 6.4% and 1.75% respectively, and whose fortunes have only revived by contesting the parliamentary elections of 2022 and 2024 as part of a left bloc.
The NFP named Lucie Castets as its candidate for prime minister on 23rd July. Castets is a civil servant and former finance director at Paris City Hall, not a member of any political party (having left the Socialist Party in 2011) and has never held an elected role. She was rapidly rejected by Macron.
Macron’s choice, former EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, is no dynamic, modernising centrist. At 73, he’s an old hand from the right, and a representative of Les Républicains, who finished a distant fourth in the National Assembly elections with just 47 seats. His CV includes opposition to decriminalising gay sex in the 1980s, and proposing a moratorium on all immigration during his unsuccessful attempt to become the centre right’s presidential candidate in 2021.
An Ifop poll commissioned by the Journal du Dimanche on 8th September found that nearly three out of four respondents believed that Barnier would be quickly removed by a vote of no confidence. Communist senator, Ian Brossat denounced what he called a “coup d’état that dare not speak its name”, and accused Macron of having a tacit agreement with the right and the extreme right.
Barnier, who is expected to name his ministers this week, will face an uphill struggle to get a budget through the National Assembly. And here’s the irony: when Macron rolled the dice back in June, it was intended to put a cordon sanitaire round the far right. Instead, it’s delivered a government that will be dependent on the far right not to oppose its budget, and not to support a likely vote of no confidence.
But while Le Pen has confirmed that the RN will not support an LFI/NFP motion of no confidence, maybe she is biding her time to unseat the government when conditions are most favourable to her 2027 presidential campaign. Whether the logjam – or potential constitutional crisis – to come will benefit the left of the far right isn’t pre-ordained.
As CGT secretary, Sophie Binet, argued, citing examples of de-industrialisation, “Voting for the far right is no longer just a protest vote, but a misguided vote of hope.” The left needs to pay particular attention to two groups where the far right has made deep inroads – former manufacturing, steel and mining rustbelt areas, and the rural areas where the far right hoovered up protectionist and irate farming votes. Any attempt to impose further rounds of austerity will encounter angry opposition.
Perhaps the left is in a better position as a powerful opposition than as an incumbent in the run-up to 2027. It feels very much that this will be the big one. With Macron unable to run for a third term, and with no obvious successor, could this be Marine Le Pen’s big chance? Or will the left build on its inspiring mobilisation this summer? With the centre set to continue its slow disintegration, the stage is set for a showdown. And there’s everything to play for.
- Richard Price is a member of the Leyton and Wanstead Constituency Labour Party and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook.
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