Macron’s hopeless search for a prime minister

Who will be the next prime minister of France? Almost two months after the center lost its majority in the national assembly, the potential candidates range from the improbable to the ludicrous.  

The latest semi-crazed idea is that Emmanuel Macron should call on Ségolene Royal, the former wife of François Hollande, a socialist party machine politician hated in equal measure by both the extreme left and populist right and who generates no enthusiasm from either the moderate Republicans or the residue of the president’s center. 

Admittedly, this idea is floated by Royal herself and has been met with general derision.

Or perhaps Bernard Cazeneuve, a moderate socialist who was Hollande’s prime minister for six months. On Monday he was on the verge of being appointed, until he wasn’t.

Or Xavier Bertrand, a centrist conservative who hates Macron and who would be fiercely opposed by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, which is numerically the largest party in the assembly.

Karim Bouamrane, the socialist mayor of Saint-Ouen, has been floated, but just as quickly floated away.

Macron has even interviewed Hollande and former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Both are wildly improbable, even when you overlook the fact that Sarkozy has been convicted of illegal election spending.

There was a brief flurry of gossip about former teacher Thierry Beaudet, president of the advisory economic, social and environmental council, a technocratic leftist who has no political experience and isn’t trusted by Macron’s own group. He was a dead cert for the job for about ten minutes.

I’ve been writing here and here for weeks that the prime minister Macron wants doesn’t exist. After throwing away the credit of France and his own political credibility by dissolving the national assembly, the president has left the nation with no government and no possibility whatsoever of anything other than a technical government to mind the store until new assembly elections can lbe called next year.

The commentariat here is belatedly coming to the same conclusion.

Pascal Praud, the lead political commentator of CNEWS, said today, “Emmanuel Macron is trying to solve an impossible equation.” Not one of the names who have been mooted has the slightest chance of forming a durable administration, he added.

Does it really matter if France has a government or not? It does. The French are facing a severe new fiscal crisis. The deficit is projected to reach 5.6 percent of GDP this year and 6.25 percent next year, well beyond the permitted 3 percent EU limit. Not that Brussels will do anything to punish Europe’s scofflaw. But the bond markets are likely to be less charitable as this farce continues.

On Saturday, France is likely to be rocked by demonstrations called by the rabid ultra-leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Meanwhile the French coast guard are still fishing bodies out of the Channel after the latest failure of the police to stop the boats, even though Britain has paid them hundreds of millions to do so. The police are mutinous after another officer was killed, this time by an immigrant with ten previous convictions. Yet another church burned to the ground this week in an arson attack.

A budget to address the fiscal crisis, which would have to cut billions, has no chance whatsoever of passing a national assembly that’s hopelessly deadlocked with no conceivable political consensus.  

And both the left and right in the assembly have pledged to reverse Macron’s pension reforms, which would probably crush the bond market. It’s a circus and Macron is the ringleader. It’s extraordinary that he’s not had the grace to admit that his presidency is an utter failure, and done the decent thing and quit.  

Were he to do so, it would create an intriguing election. Marine Le Pen would be pitted against Mélenchon, as well as Édouarde Philippe, the moderate former prime minister, and numerous others. A leading French pollster tells me Le Pen is the most likely to win, plunging not just France but all of Europe into an existential crisis.  

Now what? The president is constitutionally permitted to name anyone he wants. So here’s an idea, only slightly less likely than all the others. Since we’ve entered a surreal political landscape, perhaps he could consider Tom Tugendhat, who is both an experienced parliamentarian, seems to have no particular views, and is a French-British dual national married to a French diplomat. As he’s unlikely to be prime minister of the UK, he might as well accept the job. 

I admit this is a mad idea, but no more so than any of the others. It is indisputable now that Macron’s intemperate narcissism has plunged Europe’s second largest economy into chaos. That Britain’s Keir Starmer imagines Macron will be his new best friend in Europe is merely the latest hallucinatory element of this drama.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.