The three month old government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier in France has apparently failed to win the trust of the public, with a survey finding that a majority of the French people would back a no confidence vote to force fresh elections.
Less than three months after being placed in the Hôtel Matignon as a compromise premier by President Emmanuel Macron following his politically disastrous decision to call for snap legislative elections, it is unclear how much longer Prime Minister Barnier will be able to keep his establishment government from collapsing.
According to an Ipsos survey for La Tribune Dimanche, 53 per cent of the public would support a censure motion to bring down the government. Barnier’s personal approval rating has also collapsed since coming into power at the beginning of September, falling from 45 per cent then to 36 per cent now.
Meanwhile, just 22 per cent of the public are satisfied with the job performance of President Emmanuel Macron, the lowest level recorded since he made his ‘Jupiterian‘ ascent to the Élysée Palace in 2017.
Although the 73-year-old Barnier — the European Union’s former Brexit negotiator — was pitched as a steady hand to manoeuvre the three-way split National Assembly through the looming financial crisis, his austerity budget has met with resistance from both the leftist New Popular Front and the populist National Rally of Marine Le Pen.
After failing multiple times to pass his budget, which seeks to impose 60 billion euros in tax hikes and spending cuts, Barnier will hold Matignon talks with opposition party leaders this week, including for the first time with Le Pen.
The National Rally leader, who despite typically being branded as “far-right” by the legacy media would more accurately be described as left-wing on economic matters, signalled last week that she would be willing to join onto the leftist censure motion of no confidence put forward by the New Popular Front if Barnier refuses to address her party’s budgetary demands, such as scrapping the planned tax hikes on electricity and cars, which Lepenists have argued would put an unfair burden on working people.
Should the National Rally join onto the censure motion of the New Popular Front, the Barnier government would likely fall. However, President Macron is constitutionally barred from calling for fresh legislative elections until June of next year.
Thus Macron would have relatively few options left to him on the table, including reinstating Barnier and his cabinet or installing an “Italian-style” technocratic government.
Such a government — which was implemented in Italy several times over the past three decades — would be staffed with supposedly non-partisan ministers and “experts” who could implement unpopular austerity measures more easily as they would theoretically not be as influenced by the public given that they were unelected in the first place.
A technocratic government would be a novel experiment in France, however, given that there has never been another example in the history of the Fifth Republic.
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