France, it seems, is set to outdo the UK’s recent record of five in less than a decade for churning through prime ministers. In appointing François Bayrou to succeed the 99-day Michel Barnier, president Emmanuel Macron makes his sixth nomination to the post, each one’s term shorter than their predecessor’s.
Following a no-confidence vote that saw off the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, Bayrou inherits a poisoned chalice of Macron’s making, a parliament bitterly deadlocked between three irreconcilable groups, the fruit of the president’s impulsive decision to gamble disastrously on a general election last June.
A political veteran and ally of Macron, Bayrou leads the small MoDem party. Drawn from the same centrist pool as Barnier, he faces as little chance of building a government with sufficient cross-party support to survive another confidence vote, pass a divisive, badly needed budget, or reassure rattled markets. On Friday Moody’s cut France’s credit rating, reflecting “our view that the country’s public finances will be substantially weakened over the coming years”.
Like Barnier, Bayrou has been charged by the president to bring together a new broad-based coalition, but the appointment of an ally has again been deplored by the left-wing alliance, the Nouveau Front populaire (NFP), for failing to acknowledge their first place in June’s elections.
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The NFP is dominated by the hard-left La France Insoumise (FI), but there is no sign that even the moderate left, the Socialists, Greens and Communist Party, are any more likely to compromise on Macron’s deficit-reducing budget or his hated pension reform.
Bayrou brings some baggage to his new job which may yet come back to bite him. Like the far-right Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National (RN), he has been charged with embezzling European Parliament funds, using the money to subsidise MoDem’s work. Le Pen’s trial is ongoing, but Bayrou’s acquittal – his party was convicted – is being appealed by the prosecution.
Having played a part with the left in bringing down Barnier’s government, RN has hinted that it may now be ready to give Bayrou, for some time its preferred centrist, some leeway. RN president Jordan Bardella said on Friday it would not automatically vote for censure but his qualification sounded remarkably similar to the left’s impossible conditionality. “Our red lines remain, they’re not going to vary,” he said. “No scrapping medical reimbursements, no weakening of the economic and social situation of pensioners.”
Bayrou faces a delicate - many would say impossible - balancing act. Too many concessions to either left or right, and he loses the other. He is said to believe, however, that public opinion will not tolerate another forced departure like Barnier’s, an optimism few share.