French Prime Minister Michel Barnier delivers a speech during a ceremony organised by the Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) to pay tribute to the victims of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, on the event’s first anniversary, in Paris, on October 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

France’s new Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Tuesday (October 8, 2024) faces a motion of no-confidence brought by the left which is set to underline the fragility of his government even while having little chance of succeeding.

Mr. Barnier, a right-wing former EU Brexit negotiator, was appointed by centrist President Emmanuel Macron to bring some stability in a potentially testy “cohabitation” across the political divide after inconclusive legislative elections earlier this summer.

The veteran Premier, 73, has since sought to firmly take the reins, warning that France faces a financial crisis if its budget deficit is not narrowed and saying that tax rises could be in order for high earners.

Mr. Macron, whose term runs until 2027, has in the last weeks taken a noticeable back seat, especially on domestic issues while making uncharacteristically infrequent public comments.

The appointment of Mr. Barnier, a patrician figure who served stints as a Minister and EU commissioner, has also been a contrast for the French.

They have seen three Premiers who were almost unknown before their appointment come and go in the space of four years.

But Mr. Barnier and his government, named last month with a conspicuously right-wing tinge, could be toppled at any moment if a no-confidence motion were passed in the National Assembly lower house of government.

The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) won the most seats of any coalition in the polls— even if the far-right National Rally (RN) emerged as the largest single party— and is still livid that Mr. Macron failed to appoint a leftist as Prime Minister.

“The existence of this government, in its composition and its orientation, is a negation of the result of the legislative elections,” states the motion, which is due to be put forward by Socialist Party (PS) leader Olivier Faure.

The left has also been angered by the hardline stances of the new Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, who has said there should be a referendum on immigration, although he admitted this was not possible under the constitution.

‘Give the product a chance’

However, the motion put forward by the NFP— a coalition of Socialists, Communists, hard-leftists and Greens— has little chance of succeeding as the RN’s MPs under three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen have made clear they will not back it on this occasion.

“I think the situation is serious enough not to bring down this government before it has got going,” RN MP Laure Lavalette told France 2 television.

“We are going to… give the product a chance… We cannot add to the chaos as you (the left) are doing,” she added.

However, the numbers could prove embarrassing for the Barnier government at this early stage, with some backing for the motion coming also from independents and even some dissenting members of Mr. Macron’s centrist faction unhappy at the prospect of tax rises.

Commentators have noted that the fate of Barnier’s government risks being at the RN’s mercy, vulnerable to a “sword of Damocles” wielded by Ms. Le Pen, who is expected to run for the presidency in 2027.

The Prime Minister, for his part, is well aware that he is walking on thin ice: “I know that I am in the hands of parliament,” he told La Tribune Dimanche.

In a development that has stunned most political observers, the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire, or NFP), a leftwing coalition, has won the most number of seats in France’s legislative elections that concluded on July 7. It secured 182 seats, defeating both President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance Ensemble (168), and the far-right National Rally (RN), which performed way below poll predictions, mustering only 143. With 289 needed for absolute majority in the 577-member National Assembly, and none of the three major political blocs close to this figure, France has been plunged into political uncertainty. But the country wasn’t even due for elections this year.

The whole chain of events began with the European Parliament elections in June. Marine Le Pen’s RN finished at the top with 31.37% of the votes, handing a crushing defeat to Mr. Macron’s Ensemble, which came a distant second with 14.60% votes. Mr. Macron responded to this setback by dissolving the National Assembly and calling snap polls. He justified his decision as intended to save France from being taken over by a resurgent far-right, ostensibly by forcing the French to choose between the moderates and those on the political extremes.

Many analysts, however, criticised his move as an impetuous gamble. The first round of the elections on June 30 seemed to vindicate the criticism. The RN won 33% of the votes, while the Macronists got just 21% — even less than what they secured in the first round in 2022. The NFP came second with 28%. Ahead of the run-off on July 7, exit polls predicted a comfortable win for the RN. But to everyone’s surprise, the leftwing bloc came first.

The NFP is a last-minute, hastily cobbled together coalition of four left-of-centre elements — the Socialists, the Greens, the Communists, and the hard-left France Unbowed of Jean-Luc Melenchon. The same four had come together to form the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (NUPES) ahead of the 2022 legislative elections, where they won 142 seats and denied Mr. Macron a majority. But NUPES broke up last October following Hamas’s surprise attack and Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza. The fragmentation was triggered by Mr. Melenchon’s stand against describing the Hamas attack as “terrorist”, prompting the Socialists to quit the alliance.

Also Read | Resurgent left: On the French elections, European politics

Pressure from the ground

No one expected the perennially squabbling left parties to reunite so swiftly. But this time, the pressure for left unity was immense, and came from the ground up — from trade unions, citizens’ collectives, and civil society organisations. In the aftermath of the RN’s dominant performance in the European elections, and pollsters predicting a far-right victory in the election to come, thousands took to the streets, pressuring different sections of the French left to, in the words of Mr. Melenchon, “throw their resentments in the river” and stand together as a ‘republican dam’ against the destructive flood of fascism.

The very name ‘New Popular Front’ is a throwback to the Popular Front of 1936, the historic leftwing alliance led by socialist Prime Minister Leon Blum, which pushed back against fascism even as the rest of Europe crumbled before it. It is considered customary for the French Left to unite whenever the Republic is threatened by fascist forces. With victory for the RN a near certainty, the ex-NUPES parties worked overtime to negotiate a common platform, which became the NFP.

The results of the first round were encouraging for the alliance, as they finished second. But it wasn’t going to be enough to stop the RN from forming the government. Had it done so, it would have been the first time a far-right party came to power in France since the Vichy regime of the Second World War. But the NFP managed to avert this eventuality, thanks in large measure to the tactical understanding it reached with Macronists for the second round.

Invoking the notion of the ‘Republican dam’, both the NFP and Mr. Macron’s party withdrew more than 200 candidates from three-way contests to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote. While the NFP withdrew more than 130 candidates, about 80 Macronists stepped back, so that the run-offs became a two-way contest between the far-right and the rest. The strategy worked. Both Ensemble and the NFP did well while the RN’s performance slumped. The RN’s president, Jordan Bardella, complained bitterly about this tactic, calling it a “dishonourable alliance” that has “deprived the French people” of an RN victory.

When the results came out, Mr. Melenchon described them as a victory for the NFP and proclaimed that Mr. Macron should invite his alliance to form the new government. A minority government that forms issue-based coalitions is not unthinkable in France. There are constitutional provisions under which laws can be passed by decree. But Mr. Macron seems reluctant to work with a Prime Minister from the NFP, whose political programme is directly at odds with his own. Despite the sharp erosion in his party’s numbers, he has refused to accept Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s resignation, asking him to temporarily continue in office. According to the Constitution, Mr. Macron, whose own term extends till 2027, cannot dissolve the Assembly and call for fresh elections at least for one year, or until June 2025.

‘Acts of rupture’

But the French Left are projecting the election results as both a defeat of the far-right and a mandate for an NFP government. The core of the NFP’s policy agenda is what they call “acts of rupture”, or a break from the status quo of Mr. Macron’s neoliberal economics. Weighted heavily by the priorities of its largest constituent, France Unbowed, the NFP’s ‘rupture’ programme tries to capture the spirit of the original Popular Front, which pioneered landmark pro-labour legislation such as paid vacations and 40-hour work weeks.

As per its policy programme, the NFP, if it comes to power, would immediately freeze the prices of essentials like food and gas, hike the minimum wage, and reverse Mr. Macron’s pension reform that increased the retirement age to 64. Subsequently, they would repeal Mr. Macron’s immigration law and reintroduce the wealth tax. On the foreign policy front, they will recognise Palestinian statehood and replace the idea of “unconditional support” for any nation with support for international rule of law.

As things stand, however, in order to form the government, the NFP may have to make several compromises, including junking the idea of Mr. Melenchon as Prime Minister. With influential sections of the French media, and Mr. Macron himself, likening a government at the mercy of Mr. Melenchon’s ‘far-left’ politics to be as dangerous, if not worse, than an RN regime, there is talk of a coalition being cobbled together from among the Macronist centrists and the moderates from the right as well as the left. But that won’t be easy as even the moderates in the NFP camp would find it difficult to walk away from the “rupture” agenda.

With Mr. Macron under no deadline to name a new Prime Minister, the messy political scenario may not resolve itself before the Olympics, the nation’s top priority at the moment, are over. For now, the French Left are basking in their unforeseen success in halting the far-right juggernaut in its tracks — an achievement that continues to elude mainstream political parties across much of Europe.