Macron still doesn’t get it: All France agrees Macronism must go

The collapse of French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s government did not seem to trouble President Emmanuel Macron. Macron’s appointment of Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu, a long-time loyalist, as his new Prime Minister shows the President still thinks his centrist agenda is politically viable.

It’s understandable that he would resist dissolving parliament a second time, given that his Ensemble coalition has sunk to an unfathomably low 15-16 per cent in polls. But Lecornu’s appointment shows Macron remains in denial about the one thing a divided France agrees on: Macronism must go.

Consider the facts. Macron’s job approval is a mere 21 per cent, seven points lower than when his faction decisively lost last year’s election. Popular demonstrations against his signature economic policies are large and growing in size and scope.

The French may not be sure if they want to turn to the populist Right or the Marxist-tinged Left, but they increasingly are sure that staying the course is intolerable.

Macron’s parliamentary position is not inviting. His tripartite Renaissance coalition (Ensemble, Democratic Movement, and Horizons) holds a mere 161 seats in the 577-member Assembly. Its centre-right allies, the Republicans, add only 49 more. That’s 210 seats, well short of the 289 needed for a majority.

That means Lecornu needs to ally with another party or grouping to prevail. Since Macron rules out any regular arrangement with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and her allies, that means he must turn to his left to govern.

But Macronistes also rule out any regular arrangement with the far-left faction headed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, France Unbowed, and its green and Communist fellow travellers.

This is a principled stance. But together it means Lecornu must then rely on the Socialists, who have 66 members, and a few stray members from smaller parties to cobble together a narrow majority.

That has proven to be untenable for his two predecessors, in large part because the Socialists ran in an electoral coalition with the other leftist parties, the New Popular Front, in the last election. If the Socialists move to the Macronist center, they abandon the voters who gave them their seats.

They have consistently refused to do this. Indeed, their decision to oppose Bayrou’s government because of his refusal to accommodate their fiscal demands sealed his fate.

The Republicans also refuse to move to the Left to accommodate parliamentary reality, insisting that any government meet their fiscal demands.

Macron and Lecornu are therefore stuck between the Scylla of a fiscally loose Socialist left and the Charybdis of a fiscally tight Republican right.

The inherent incompatibility of these demands was on stark display in the prospective parties’ reactions to Bayrou’s deposition. The Socialist leader called on Macron to appoint a Prime Minister from the Left, but Mélenchon said he would refuse to support a Socialist government that included Macronist ministers.

Meanwhile, Republican leader Bruno Retailleau said his party would not participate in a government with a Socialist Prime Minister.

Macron’s appointment of Lecornu is thus an attempt to defy reality and try a third time to govern from a centre that has not held. Like Sisyphus, however, he is doomed to see the boulder roll back down the hill.

He will eventually have to make a tactical retreat. That will mean watering down some of his policies and keeping French debt levels higher than he wants. But the political math following his own blunder gives him no other option.

Macron is not likely to do this, however, with Lecornu as his agent.

Moving to the Left for support on a budget is not feasible given Mélenchon’s position. Macron cannot cobble together a majority with merely the moderate Left and his forces even if the Socialists were willing to join him.

Moving to the Right means governing in tacit, if not explicit, coalition with National Rally. They likely would not agree to this, given that they stand to gain significantly if new elections are held. Why should Le Pen give up the chance to strengthen her party’s position for a mere year’s worth of marginal gains?

This means new elections are inevitable. And those elections will further erode Macron’s parliamentary position and cede ground to the extremes Right and Left, throwing his agenda into the trash bin.

That may be in Macronism’s long-term interest. France faces deep problems and government forces populists to sober up quickly. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that the only way to prick the populist energy gaining ground in France is to give them a hand at the tiller.

Macron would not benefit from this personally, as he would be diminished and appear to be a beaten figure.

But that’s already the truth. He’s a political version of Bruce Willis’ character from the classic movie, The Sixth Sense: Macron is already politically dead; he just doesn’t know it.