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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
It is nearly three months since President Emmanuel Macron dissolved parliament in a misguided attempt to bring political “clarity” to France. The shock snap elections in which his centrist alliance was roundly beaten have brought anything but clarity, even if voters rejected installing the far-right in power. France has now had a caretaker government for more than six weeks, the longest such stint since the beginning of the fourth republic in 1946.
Macron in effect declared a political truce over the summer. It was no doubt appreciated by many French people during a highly successful Olympic Games and the sacrosanct August holidays. But the country has been rudderless for too long. And there is no stable coalition in sight that could command a solid majority in the National Assembly.
After belatedly beginning consultations with party leaders on Friday, the president on Monday rejected an attempt by the leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire, a four-party alliance that came first in June’s parliamentary elections with 180 seats in an assembly of 577. Despite some vaguely compromising signals from Lucie Castets, the little known senior civil servant the NFP put forward as its candidate for prime minister, the left intended to govern alone and implement its programme in full. The president concluded, with some justification, that the NFP would be instantly voted down by the other parties and could not provide the “institutional stability” the country requires.
The NFP’s programme of vast spending and tax increases — and the influence of the anti-capitalist far-left La France Insoumise, the biggest of its four member parties — would have been a disaster for business and the economy. The saving grace of such a minority government would have been its short life. It might have been better for French democracy had Macron allowed it to take power and own its inevitable failure.
Instead, the president’s attempt to micromanage the formation of the next government gives the impression that he has not digested the implications of his election gamble: the French voted for change, rejecting his government and backing the opposition parties, with political power shifting away from the Elysée palace to parliament. He is not acting as a neutral arbiter of the constitution but as a politician with a legacy to protect.
Macron’s objective is to maintain a government of the centre that sticks to the pro-business course he has taken over the past seven years. For that, he needs the moderate centre-left and greens to abandon the hardline positions of the far-left and work with his centrist alliance and the centre-right. Unfortunately, he has done little to woo social democrats and his high-handed rejection of the NFP has simply driven the parties of the left closer together.
The betrayal argument is especially potent on the left. But the French political system, from the president down, lacks a culture of compromise. There is no tradition of coalition building or drawing up programmatic contracts, as in many other European countries. None of the main parties has seriously tried to find common ground with others on policy over the summer. The left has wrongly assumed that it won the election and has the right to wield power against the majority. The centre-right has issued a list of untouchable policy demands. Macron’s centrists have been the most open — as long as their achievements are left alone.
France’s parliamentarians should fulfil their responsibilities. If nobody gives ground, the country is heading for at best a technocratic administration with a very minimalist agenda, including setting a 2025 budget. Even that could prove extremely hard. An ungovernable France benefits no one except the far-right, which is waiting in the wings.