France has been plunged into a new political crisis with the defeat of Prime Minister François Bayrou at a confidence vote in the National Assembly.

The defeat – by 364 votes to 194 – means that Bayrou will on Tuesday present his government's resignation to President Emmanuel Macron, who must now decide how to replace him. Macron's office said this would happen "in the coming days".

The options include naming a new prime minister from the centre-right; pivoting to the left and finding a name compatible with the Socialist Party; and dissolving parliament so new elections are held.

Macron's bitter enemies in the far-left France Unbowed party are calling for him personally to resign, but few commentators think it likely.

France is thus on its way to getting a fifth prime minister in less than two years - a dismal record that underscores the drift and disenchantment that have marked the president's second term.

Bayrou's fall came after he staked his government on an emergency confidence debate on the question of French debt.

He spent the summer warning of the "existential" threat to France if it did not start to tackle its €3.4 trillion (£2.9 trillion) liability.

In a budget for 2026 he proposed to scrap two national holidays and freeze welfare payments and pensions, with the aim of saving €44 billion.

But he was quickly disabused of any hope that his prophesies of financial doom would sway opponents. 

Party after party made quite clear they saw Monday's vote as an opportunity to settle accounts with Bayrou - and through him Macron.

Lacking any majority in the National Assembly, Bayrou saw the left and hard-right uniting against him - and his fate was sealed.

Some commentators have described Bayrou's fall as an act of political suicide. There was no need for him to call the early confidence vote, and he could have spent the coming months trying to build support.

In his speech beforehand, Bayrou made clear that he had his eyes set more on history rather than politics, telling MPs that it was future generations who would suffer if France lost its financial independence.

"Submission to debt is the same as submission to arms," he said, warning that current debt levels meant "plunging young people into slavery".

"You may have the power to bring down the government. But you cannot efface reality," he said.

There was no sign that Bayrou's warnings have had any impact on parliament or on France as a whole. Deputies from the left and hard-right accused him of trying to mask his own and Macron's responsibility in bringing France to its current state.

In the country, there has also been little echo to Bayrou's analysis – with polls showing that few regard debt control as a national priority, as opposed to the cost of living, security and immigration.

A movement calling itself Bloquons Tout (Let's Block Everything ) has promised a wave of sit-ins, boycotts and protests against Macron's policies from this Wednesday. On 18 September several unions are also calling for demonstrations.

Most economic analysts agree that France faces a huge financial challenge in the years ahead, as the projected cost of servicing its debt rises from the €30bn spent in 2020 to more than €100bn in 2030.

The need for financial restraint comes as Macron promises extra funds for defence, and as opposition parties of left and hard-right demand the repeal of the latest pension reform that raised the retirement age to 64.

Bayrou took over from Michel Barnier last December after Barnier failed to get his budget through the Assembly. 

Bayrou managed to pass a budget thanks to a non-aggression pact with the Socialists, but their relations plunged when a conference on the latest pension reform failed to take account of Socialist demands.

Some speculated that Macron would turn now to a left-wing prime minister, having failed with the conservative Barnier and the centrist Bayrou. 

However the Socialist Party says it wants a total break from Macron's pro-business policies as well as a repeal of the pension reform - which would be tantamount to undoing the president's legacy.

It therefore seems likely Macron will look initially to another figure from within his own camp, with Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu, Labour Minister Catherine Vautrin and Finance Minister Éric Lombard all said to be in the running.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2dnxxekyezo

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

French government collapse: Will Macron learn any lessons?
He is burning through prime ministers at a steady pace – not that he’s likely to learn his lesson and stop milking the taxpayers

BY Rachel Marsden

France has gone through so many prime ministers lately that they should just bolt a wind turbine to the revolving door. At least then the political instability could maybe bring down the people’s rising power bills, particularly given that the tax on energy just jumped from 5.5% to 20%.

Francois Bayrou is the third handpicked puppet of French President Emmanuel Macron, who’s at around 15% popularity himself, to get turfed within a year, and the fourth over the past two years. He called for a no-confidence vote on himself a couple of weeks ago, effectively begging opposition lawmakers to put him out of his political misery after finding himself in the apparently impossible situation of trying to find €44 billion to cut from the French budget.

So Bayrou found himself in front of parliament on Monday, right before the vote, pretending to plead with lawmakers not to shove him off the ledge and into the political abyss from which Macron fished him out in the first place. MPs enthusiastically seized the opportunity to pay tribute to Bayrou, but what they delivered looked more like a highlight reel of slam dunks – with Bayrou as the basketball. They accused him of everything from degrading France’s finances while claiming to be investigating them, to racking up new expenses while hand-wringing over the mounting bills.

Bayrou gets to now go back home to the south of France and enjoy a lifetime of gold-plated entitlements for having been a prime minister for all of about ten seconds. It turned out that 364 lawmakers voted against him, with just 194 awarding him their confidence.

It’s been a long time coming. Bayrou really hasn’t seemed too interested in hanging in there for a while now. Why else would he have proposed, back in mid-July, canceling a couple of paid state holidays every year for French workers as a means of pinching a few pennies? Or clawing back benefits that French workers have paid into their entire lives under the explicit agreement that if they pay massive taxes during their productive life, then the government will guarantee their comfort on the back end or when they need a social safety net.

In the run-up to this vote, Bayrou was also riffing on the idea of saving a few more cents by canceling health coverage for things like doctor-prescribed spa trips. Admittedly, I was surprised when first I arrived here a couple of decades ago to learn that French social security pays for people to flop around in spring water up in the Alps, but it’s hard to imagine that’s what broke the bank or tops the list of idiotic big-ticket items.

Quick reminder that the French people didn’t actually choose Bayrou. Macron did. And since Bayrou is resigning, it’s back to the drawing board for the French president to try to find another puppet who can make the budget cuts that he and Brussels are demanding, but also appease the opposition enough – notably the anti-establishment right and left populists that can band together for a majority vote – to avoid having to make another trip to the polls. Failing that, it will be back to the voting booth again to test whether the French are finally fed up enough to saddle Macron with polling frontrunner Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party’s control of the government’s purse strings.

Despite France’s problems at home, Bayrou distracted himself by lecturing Trump about America’s issues, even as the ground was giving out from under him, whining about Washington’s “bulldozer politics” compared to France’s respect for its citizens – which must be why Bayrou was so keen to take a gig that those same citizens didn’t actually elect him to do.

A few days ahead of this vote, Bayrou’s finance minister, Eric Lombard, was basically trying to keep his job and government in place by scaring up support, floating the ridiculous specter of an International Monetary Fund intervention, before having to backpedal. It’s absurd scaremongering since Italy and Japan have higher debt-to-GDP ratios and France is a long way from ever qualifying for, or needing, IMF help, according to virtually every economic expert. But the vibe is like, ‘You’d better let us do what we want with the budget because otherwise the globalists are gonna lock us in our rooms under a curfew.’

So what’s the plan now, then? This is where yet another scare tactic comes in to grease taxpayers’ wallets, drumming up the need to throw more tax money into the defense sector ‘for Ukraine’, and hoping that does the heavy lifting of boosting the economy. Arms dealing as the path to economic salvation. Then what’s next? Drug dealing? Literal state prostitution?

Meanwhile, France remains politically blocked, and faces another round of protests on Wednesday under the battle cry of Block Everything. But the truly revolutionary idea would be to unblock this hot mess. And that doesn’t look set to happen anytime soon.

https://www.rt.com/news/624325-france-pm-no-confidence/

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

ALL THAT MACRON LEARNT AT SCHOOL WAS TO F**K HIS TEACHER...