Following a startling victory for Marine Le Pen in European elections last June, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, foolishly called a snap legislative poll. The idea was to give voters a salutary wake-up call, daring them to repeat their embrace of Ms Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party in a domestic election. The unanticipated result was a suddenly deadlocked parliament, in which the influence of the National Rally and the left significantly increased, and a lame-duck status for Mr Macron’s second term.
That failed gamble has now led to another, which appears equally doomed. This week, Mr Macron’s fourth prime minister in two years put the future of his minority government on the line, in an attempt to pass a deeply unpopular budget this autumn. François Bayrou, intending to deliver his own wake-up call to MPs, has unexpectedly called a confidence vote to take place early next month. MPs will be challenged to either endorse in principle Mr Bayrou’s view that austerity is necessary to reduce the public deficit, or vote for the government to fall.
