The
Guardian view on political chaos in France: the gift that keeps on giving to
Marine Le Pen and the far right
Editorial
Influential
abroad, Emmanuel Macron’s strategic errors at home are bringing mainstream
French politics into disrepute at a crucial moment
Tue 7 Oct
2025 18.21 BST
In
Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, hell is portrayed as a locked room in
which characters are condemned to fall out and squabble for all eternity. Ever
since foolishly calling a snap election which delivered a deadlocked and
divided national assembly, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has found
himself trapped in a modern political version of the same plot.
On Monday
morning, the third prime minister Mr Macron has appointed in just over a year
became the latest to throw in the towel, after only 27 days in the job. Hours
after unveiling his ministerial team, Sébastien Lecornu stood down following a
backlash from centre-right allies, who objected to the number of carryovers
from François Bayrou’s previous administration. By Monday evening, Mr Macron
had persuaded Mr Lecornu to conduct a round of last-ditch negotiations to try
to resolve the crisis. Should he fail, the president has hinted that the next
step will be a second dissolution of parliament and fresh legislative
elections.
Such
dizzying chaos and dysfunction is bringing mainstream French politics into
disrepute, at a time when Marine Le Pen’s far right National Rally enjoys a
substantial lead in the polls. For this ominous state of affairs, Mr Macron
bears a heavy responsibility. His centrist alliance lost its outright majority
in the parliamentary elections of 2022, and was then defeated by a leftwing
coalition in the snap poll he called last year. But he has ploughed on as if
nothing had changed, pressuring successive prime ministers to propose unpopular
austerity budgets without a mandate.
Persisting
with this doomed approach, as bond markets increasingly target the EU’s second
largest economy, has been irresponsible. Repeatedly, Mr Macron has called for
mainstream politicians to compromise and reach a consensus in the national
interest. They have signally failed to do that. But the president himself has
been the most obdurate, refusing to make any meaningful concessions. In
particular, Mr Macron has failed to acknowledge that the public mood (and
parliamentary arithmetic) will not permit deficit-cutting measures that
primarily come at the expense of public services and the less well-off. Calls
from the left for an annual 2% wealth tax on super-rich households, for
example, have been resolutely ignored.
As the
risk of economic instability mounts, with knock-on effects for the rest of
Europe, France needs to find a way out of the impasse. Even if Mr Lecornu
manages to patch things up with the centre-right Les Républicains party, the
resulting minority government will almost certainly meet the same ignominious
fate as its predecessors. Fresh legislative elections, given the polls, would
carry a risk of handing power in parliament to the National Rally, or producing
further deadlock. But the present political paralysis and infighting is a gift
to Ms Le Pen ahead of presidential elections in 2027.
For Mr
Macron, who arrived in the Élysée with the avowed intention of preventing the
further rise of the far right, the twilight of his second term has turned into
a political humiliation. Abroad, he has played a central and valuable role in
shaping Europe’s response to a new era of geopolitical instability. But
domestically, a combination of hubris and economic rigidity has left him
isolated and terminally unpopular. It is highly unlikely that he will himself
resign, and Mr Lecornu may yet succeed in keeping the show on the road for a
while. But France deserves better from its president and its political class.
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