Where the French go, the British go too?

by Richard Pooley

Oh, how we Brits are enjoying France’s political travails! The UK’s mainstream media, reliably francophobe when it comes to politics, economic policy and business, have revelled in the inability of President Emmanuel Macron to keep his prime ministers for longer than a few months. They have welcomed his attempts to reform the French economy but mock the French people’s unwillingness to accept the consequences - working longer hours, retiring later, and taking smaller pensions. They harp on about the seemingly inexorable rise in France’s public debt. In April it stood at Є3.35 trillion, equivalent to 114 per cent of GDP (but are the UK’s figures - £2.9 trillion and 96% - so much better?).

The latest French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, was appointed on 9 September, resigned on 6 October and reappointed on 10 October. The headline in the Daily Telegraph on 11 October was “Macron ‘drunk on power’ after PM appointment”, quoting Manuel Bompard, national coordinator of the far-left party La France Insoumise  (France Unbowed). Lecornu is the fifth prime minister Macron has appointed since his second presidential term started three years ago. During his first term – 2017-2022 – there were just two.

If Lecornu fails to get next year’s budget accepted by the National Assembly (he needs to put it before the parliament by 13 October) or fails a vote of confidence (likely to be brought by the far-right party Rassemblement National (National Rally) of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella), he will have been prime minister for an even shorter time than Liz Truss, the British Conservative prime minister who managed fifty days. For some reason the UK’s mainstream media, mostly reliably right-wing, have not made the comparison. Nor have I heard any British commentator on France’s political turmoil point out that we Brits also had to put up with five Conservative prime ministers, admittedly over nine years rather than three.

It has struck me that the British media don't realise that the Brits may soon experience exactly what the French are going through now.

For reasons that nobody seems to know, Macron called a snap parliamentary election in June last year, three years before it was due to take place. At the time it felt to me it was done out of pique. Was he simply infuriated that Marine Le Pen's National Rally had bested his party in elections to the European Parliament? Whatever the reason it was an incredibly stupid decision.

In 2022 his party, Renaissance, and its centrist allies, which had formed Ensemble pour la République  (Together for the Republic), had lost their majority in the parliamentary elections. But despite heading a minority government, his then prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, managed to pass several pieces of important legislation, most notably  one which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. This was hugely unpopular and remains so. It was hardly surprising therefore that Ensemble lost yet more seats in the 2024 parliamentary election.

This is the current composition of France’s parliament (image from the BBC and the French National Assembly website):

Lecornu, like his two predecessors, has been unable to form a stable government out of this hemicycle of parties. Every attempt to get a national budget passed has failed.

There have been several times in the history of France’s Fifth Republic, established by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, when a president was from one political party and his prime minister was from another. This cohabitation happened when the majority in the National Assembly was held by a different party or alliance of parties than the president’s. It worked because the president was much more powerful than his prime minister, who he could fire at any time, and, crucially, because none of the main parties in the National Assembly were extremist.

Not now. Look at the make-up of the French parliament. France Unbowed and the Communists have 15.3% of the seats. The Ecologists are closer to Jean-Luc Mélenchin’s France Unbowed than to the Socialists. Add their 6.6% and I would argue the far-left parties in France currently have 21.9% of the seats. Go round to the far right and National Rally and their Union des Droites pour la République (UDR) allies have 24% of the seats. In between are the Socialists (12%), the hodgepodge of parties which make up Ensemble (28%), and the Republicans (8.7%). And those grey Others (5.4%)? Even more of a hodgepodge than Macron’s lot. Do the maths. “C’est impossible, Sébastien”. Your move, Mr President. Another parliamentary election? Or you resign and let the people choose a new president? Even two of your ex-prime ministers, Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal (leader of Ensemble), have suggested the latter option.

Let’s move forward to May 2028 and cross La Manche to the UK. Prime Minister Wes Streeting has had enough of the civil war within his Labour party. MPs have quit the party for Jeremy Corbyn’s far-left Your party or their close allies, the Greens, led by the charismatic Zack Polanski. Streeting has called a general election, despite the fact that he still has a majority in the House of Commons which every opinion poll shows will melt away if the voters have their say. Perhaps he thinks his charisma and success at cutting waiting times for treatment in the National Health Service will turn the tide. Maybe he senses that the lack of obviously talented and competent people in Reform, the far-right party of Nigel Farage, will finally persuade voters to come back to Labour. They clearly haven’t forgiven Robert Jenrick’s Conservative party for the years of austerity and then chaos when they were in power. Anyway the Conservatives are just a semi-skimmed version of full-fat Reform these days. And what of Ed Davey's Liberal Democrats, ostensibly the third largest party in the Commons these past four years although you wouldn’t know it from the lack of coverage in the mainstream and social media? They have won two by-elections in what had been Conservative seats in the south of England (but only because the old Tory vote had been split between Reform and the Conservatives). We mustn’t forget the Scottish National Party or Plaid Cymru or the parties of Northern Ireland. Or indeed the Independents for various causes who local polls suggest could win ten seats.

The 2028 UK General Election results are as follows (in % of seats held):

Your Party: 8%

Green: 15%

Labour: 19%

Liberal Democrat: 11%

Conservative: 12%

Reform: 29%

Other: 6%

Very unlikely? Not under the first-past-the-post system we have in the UK. Remember these percentages are not of the popular vote; they are of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. In the 2024 general election Labour got 411 seats with just 33.7% of the popular vote, while Reform won 5 seats with 14.3% of the popular vote.

Who will King Charles III ask to form the new government in 2028? He will have to summon Nigel Farage first, as the leader of the largest party. Robert Jenrick will need little persuasion to join with his fellow-scourge of immigrants. But with 41% of seats a Reform-Tory coalition won’t be able to get any of its far-right policies through parliament, not even if they bribed the nationalists with promises of independence referenda. Surely, you say, the Liberal Democrats could be arm-twisted into joining such a coalition. Don’t mention the world ‘coalition’ to a Liberal Democrat, at least not with the Tories, let alone Reform. Never again. What about getting them working with Labour and the Greens? That’s a workable majority of 55% . Not if Zach Polanski’s “eco-populist” views have turned into Green party policy: leave NATO and soak the rich.

Perhaps King Charles will turn to Emmanuel Macron for some advice. He’ll have left office some while back after Jordan Bardella beat Edouard Philippe to become president of France.