Michel Barnier, France’s new conservative prime minister, has yet to appoint a government, still less lay out its agenda. But three-quarters of voters already believe that he will soon be on his way out, despite Emmanuel Macron’s hope that the former EU Brexit negotiator can safeguard his legacy after multiple misjudgments.
Mr Barnier himself once described the president’s leadership as “solitary and arrogant”. That helps to explain the disastrous snap election. It saw support surge for Marine Le Pen’s far right in the first round, before the withdrawal of candidates by a republican front and tactical voting rode to the rescue in the second. The outcome was a legislature essentially split into three blocs – left, centre and far right – in a country without a recent history of coalition building.
