The vote was led by the leftwing populists La France Insoumise and was supported by vote from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in an act that Barnier called a “conjunction of opposites”.
As Barnier warned, the situation is grave: France faces a difficult financial reality, and government instability and institutional paralysis will only exacerbate the problem. As President Emmanuel Macron moves to replace Barnier, everyone involved, from government to opposition, should consider how they arrived at this situation.
It was the persistence of the competitive and majoritarian instincts of France’s politicians that engendered this crisis. They should now accept that only a change in this kind of culture will help France out of its predicament.
These instincts were evident from the moment Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called early parliamentary elections in June, following his party’s poor showing at the European Parliament elections.
Anticipating that the RN might win an outright majority in the National Assembly, based on its results in the first round of elections (where it secured 32% of the vote), rival parties devised a joint strategy to stop it. They created a “republican front” that brought together parliamentarians from the far left, the centrists that make up Macron’s base and the centre right.
Parties in the alliance entered an electoral pact between the first and second rounds of voting, withdrawing their candidates where it would enable another to prevent the RN from winning the seat.
It was this tactic that meant that, after years of steady growth in support, the RN narrowly missed being in office for the first time. It also deprived France of a majority and created three political clusters in the parliament of roughly equal size, each one incapable of governing alone.
But while Macron’s group was content to partner with the others to keep the RN out of power, these noble sentiments evaporated when it came to governing. The economic ideology of each party was too different for them to find common ground. The centrists instead formed a minority government, a manoeuvre made possible by Macron’s centrists pleading with the RN to abstain during the government’s vote of investiture to ease its path.
Brinkmanship
While the RN enjoyed its new role as kingmaker, it didn’t hesitate to maintain its own competitive instincts when dealing with the ratification of the government’s budget – the cause of the current crisis.
The budget Barnier presented to the parliament was tough: €60 billion (£50 billion) needed to be found to correct a yawning deficit and to tackle a colossal public debt. To the government’s credit, it tried to spread the pain evenly (though not equally) across the board through a mix of tax increases and spending cuts.
To pass the budget, a compromise would have to be forged between the government and the RN. But here again, a strict majoritarian logic was at play.
The RN felt it wasn’t being listened to, and accused the government of being closed to dialogue. In that respect, the RN was correct. Barnier himself claimed to be willing to listen but not to negotiate.
Knowing it was the key to ratifying the budget, the RN drew its red lines and issued its demands, focusing on the measures that would be most immediately felt by voters. It wanted to suspend the re-introduction of taxes on electricity, and a U-turn on proposed cuts to reimbursements for medical prescriptions. It also called for an immediate indexation of pension payments.
The government conceded, first over the electricity prices, then over prescriptions, until Barnier finally decided that was enough. The government could not go further without derailing its plans to restructure public spending, and without losing face to blackmail.
And this is essentially what the whole exchange was about. The RN’s demands were also an act of retribution against the centrists and a reminder of its past threats to bring the government down.
Barnier is a seasoned politician with an acute sense of the game to which he was being subjected. So rather than put the budget to a vote in the National Assembly, he chose to make the vote one about the “responsibility of the government”. To do so, he cited a clause in the constitution that allows the government to pass a law without a parliamentary vote.
He did this knowing that the opposition parties’ only option to stop him would be to call a vote of confidence and bring down the government. Such a motion was brought forward by the leftwing New Popular Front group and supported by the RN.
Why would Barnier imperil the survival of the government in this way? It was a continuous display of the competitive and majoritarian logic, to put the ball back in the RN’s court and force it to confront the risks that its own behaviour carries.
What happens next?
The RN now has to navigate the unchartered waters into which it has pushed the country. The government has fallen, but fresh elections can’t take place until July. A technocratic caretaker government will take over in the meantime, leading to paralysis in the French political system.
But this paralysis has rattled credit markets and increased the price of borrowing for the French government. This is a problem for the government but it is also a problem for the RN if the electorate perceives it to be responsible.
Many of the RN’s core supporters have an anti-system attitude. They oppose the government and always will because it is part of an establishment.
But the RN will never win office, and certainly not the presidency, by relying solely on this core base. It needs support from moderate centre-right voters, including those with economically liberal inclinations, who prize economic stability above all. Alienating them is not an option.
As Barnier had intended, the budget dispute has highlighted these internal tensions and harmed the RN’s prospects.
The RN’s most likely tactic in response is to try to shift the blame back onto the government in the hope that Macron can do nothing else but resign. Marine Le Pen is waiting in the wings.
Simon Toubeau, Associate Professor, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
