It has been described as a letter of resignation and a high-stakes gamble. The demand by French prime minister Francois Bayrou for a parliamentary vote of confidence on September 8th, ahead of a doomed budget vote, is both.
With left and far right parties predictably announcing that they will vote against the prime minister, Bayrou’s minority centre-right government has run out of road . Better, Bayrou reasons, to face up to that long-evident reality now than prolong the agony. For the second time in a year France will be left rudderless.
The government looks set to fall – markets are already spooked – and replacing it will prove almost impossible under the current parliamentary disposition in which the far-right’s Rassemblement National (RN) and the left’s uncomfortable alliance hold a blocking majority. That said, they are sworn enemies who will not under any circumstances form a governing majority .
Bayrou’s predecessor, Michel Barnier, was toppled by a no-confidence vote from the left and the RN just 91 days after he was appointed. At issue is mainly what Bayrou has referred to as the government’s “urgent and indispensable” strategy for cutting the country’s public deficit – requiring, in his words, a “Himalaya” of a budget.
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Last month he outlined €44 billion in tax rises and spending cuts, including scrapping two days of national holiday, freezing rises to pensions and social welfare benefits for a year, and requiring a “solidarity contribution”, as yet undefined, from the wealthy. His four-year plan aims to cut the deficit that ballooned to 5.8 per cent of GDP last year back to 3 per cent, the limit under EU rules.
Bayrou had been appointed championing “reconciliation” between the parties. There is no sign of that. Indeed, he has managed to set an unpopularity record for a prime minister under the Fifth Republic. President Emmanuel Macron has said he is reluctant to call a general election. But faced with parliamentary deadlock he may have no choice . Whether that will change the parliamentary balance of forces is doubtful. French politics is stuck and there is no clear way out.
