Crisis in France: it’s all Macron's fault

In the end, he chose the easy way out. François Bayrou, the French prime minister, asked the National Assembly whether it had confidence in him, knowing full well that it didn’t. MPs acted as they were always going to act, and voted to topple the government, a first for the country’s fifth republic.

He should have looked sullen, at the end of the debate, but somehow it already seemed like a great weight had been taken off his shoulders. Bayrou smiled, lightly, as he talked about the nine months he’d had as head of the government. They ended with a bang instead of a whimper, as he implored his colleagues to agree to his plan to solve the national debt, and they didn’t.

You could, cynically, argue that the move was perhaps more calculated than it seemed. Many in the French press did. Sure, “the debt” is a problem, but was this really the best course of action for France, or merely for Bayrou? To mangle a couple of quotes from Hamilton: dying is easy old man, governing is harder.

Then again, maybe there isn’t anything else he could have done. He was in power for nine months, and wasn’t that impressive? Michel Barnier, who came before him, only lasted for three. Before that, Gabriel Attal tied with Bayrou. Prime ministers were, once upon a time, figures who could dominate whole stretches of a childhood; these days, at best, they just about outlive a pregnancy.

Is it their fault? Probably not. The National Assembly is ungovernable. Sway too far to the left and the far-right promises to raise hell; try to play footsie with the right and everyone else breaks out in hives. There is no majority for anything, save for inertia and despair. Whose fault is that? You probably know the answer. We all do.

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France is on the brink – again

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Emmanuel Macron came into power in 2017 by promising to break French politics then rebuild something greater, and he did the first but not the second. There is, technically, a centre-left and there is, technically, a centre-right, but they’re still struggling to get back up. Macron’s party, En Marche was, once upon a time, meant to be the true centre; the way forward that saved the country from the extremes. Instead, it gutted the mainstream and let the populists thrive.

What does that true centre have to offer now? No-one really knows. In 2022, Macron wasn’t Marine Le Pen, and that had to do. The only problem, really, is that winning by stating who you aren’t can work, but a country can’t be run on negative space alone.

He will now have to pick a new Prime Minister – his seventh in eight years – and you would have to work hard to find a single person, anywhere in France, who has high hopes for them.

Like their predecessors, their main role will be that of a minion in a video game: shield the boss and take the hits until you keel over.

There is no programme of government and no meaningful way out of the quicksand; often, it feels like there is nothing left to do but run down the clock, and wait for the next election. Already, both the far-left and far-right have demanded Macron should go, and that an early election should be called. Would it be such a terrible idea? Who knows. Maybe something will come up before 2027. It probably won’t. Who knows?

Bayrou didn’t work out because he was never going to, but that doesn’t mean his departure can’t trigger yet another wave of despair. You can’t get out of grief just because you saw it coming, and France’s slow descent into political oblivion doesn’t become less painful the more predictable it gets.

It now feels easy to forget that, in 2017, Macron won not purely because of his talent and ideas, but because the country’s political mainstream had little else to offer. The centre-left was exhausted and the centre-right headed by a shameless crook; the far right was at the door, and the far left in the ascendant.

Undaunted by the task at hand, Macron looked to a bruised and frustrated electorate and said he could fix it all. As it turns out, he couldn’t. There are just under two years left for someone else to appear and hope to save the republic, but will they? Is that even the right question to ask?

Anyone with eyes can see that Bayrou was only ever a symptom, but France must reckon with the possibility that Macron was as well. It feels easy and good to assume that a country can be saved or broken by a single man, but the sins of the political class cannot be absolved by any one person.

The National Assembly probably wasn’t wrong when it toppled the government on Monday, but it should learn the lesson Macron is still reckoning with. Superficial destruction may feel good in the moment, but it can only get you so far when your issues are existential.