The French are an arrogant, cranky, insufferable lot, and no one exemplifies that better than the wee, elfin popinjay who has been their president for the past eight years, Emmanuel Macron.
The country is on the edge of a fiscal precipice, which a parade of Prime Ministers – working on four over the past year – have been unable to grapple with in the unsettled political climate that is the French National Assembly and what remains of Macron’s wounded tenure.
His troubles truly began last year, after Macron called a surprise snap election. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) won a historic victory, taking almost 35% of the total in the first round of national voting. The race was on to cut her populist party out of the rest of the balloting rounds.
Left-wing radicals are dangerous just as much as those Islamists.
— Vivid.🇮🇱 (@VividProwess) July 1, 2024
By the end of July last year, the Left had managed to make enough deals to hold off the surging RN and regain a tenuous lead. Instead of tackling the economy, it was promising even more giveaways to unions, and Jews were already being warned by their rabbis to leave the country if they could.
Those coalitions collapsed, one after another.
Now Macron is looking for ‘Prime Minister Number Four of the Year,’ after his latest short-lived choice went down in flames over austerity measures. Again.
France’s government was toppled in a vote of no confidence on Monday, forcing President Emmanuel Macron to search for his fourth prime minister in 12 months — and throwing the EU’s second largest economy into chaos.
Premier François Bayrou was ousted overwhelmingly in a 364-194 vote against him, losing an apparent gamble that lawmakers would back his push for France to slash public spending to repay its debts.
The 74-year-old centrist was instead voted out, ending his short-lived minority government after being appointed by Macron in December.
...Baryou’s hope to cut debt included a bid to push a $51 billion savings plan that called for scrapping two public holidays and freezing government spending.
“The greatest risk was to not take one, to let things go on without changing anything, to go on doing politics as usual,” he said, describing France as a nation facing “a silent, underground, invisible, and unbearable hemorrhage” of excessive public borrowing.
“Submission to debt is like submission through military force. Dominated by weapons, or dominated by our creditors, because of a debt that is submerging us — in both cases, we lose our freedom,” Bayrou added.
France, adrift in a sea of red, poses a real threat not only to itself but to the entire European Union. Whispers and speculation of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout grow louder and more widespread each day.
…Is the need for a bailout an imminent threat? No, but it is a logistical possibility. And France has time and again shocked the world. Periodical self-destruction is almost a cultural characteristic of this great European nation. So concerns are legitimate: A French default, as an eventual result of a political limbo, could shatter Europe’s economy, dim the EU’s global star, and even dismantle the Union.
…A French default would rock Europe’s foundations. France, 15 per cent of eurozone GDP, could sweep along borrowing costs for Italy and Spain, as in 2011, Reuters reminds. Banks like Deutsche Bank, laden with French bonds, will face losses, risking a credit freeze. “The euro could drop 10 per cent,” warned investment bank Jefferies’ Mohit Kumar, raising import costs for goods and raw materials, thus choking trade.
The EU’s global clout would take a serious blow. France’s €48 billion defence budget is key to NATO and EU missions. A default could gut this, echoing France’s post-Waterloo retreat from world power status. The impact on Brussels would be devastating. What sort of a global player is this, when its second largest economy needs an IMF bailout? This no Greece. This is La République.
With the effete Macron at its helm, France has lurched from social convulsion to convulsion. Riots over everything from the threat of imposing fiscal sobriety to the foes of immigration sweep shrieking protestors out of their homes for evening rounds of boulevard car-b-ques and rampages, which periodically create scenes recalling woodprints of the Revolution.
Strikes across every segment of the working population periodically cripple and stall transportation, fuel deliveries, or other essential services to drive home the point to Macron’s government of the citizens’ general unhappiness with the state of affairs.
Not coincidentally, there is a massive, nationwide shutdown – SHUTDOWN(!) – planned for tomorrow.
How helpful, non?
‘Block everything’: Nationwide protests set to disrupt travel across France on 10 September
France faces a day of gridlock on Wednesday as a grassroots movement to ‘block everything’ threatens to paralyse the country’s transport networks.
The demonstrations, branded Bloquons tout (‘let’s block everything’), are part of a nationwide strike against Prime Minister François Bayrou’s proposed austerity plan – action that will continue even after his fragile minority government collapsed this week.
The movement to “block everything” bubbled up online as far back as July. In recent weeks, it spread rapidly on TikTok, Telegram and other platforms with viral calls for boycotts, blockades and strikes.
Its popular beginnings have drawn it comparisons to the Yellow Vest protests in 2018, which grew from anger over fuel prices into nationwide action against political elites.
At the centre of the anger this time is Bayrou’s 2026 financial plan, which sought to cut €44 billion from the national budget to reduce France’s deficit. Key measures included removing two national holidays, freezing pensions and cutting €5 billion in health spending.
Tantrums get the French people everywhere, but stable and relatively solvent.
In their defense, they do have quite a bit to be angry about, too.
…Citizen anger fuels the crisis. Only 15 per cent of the French trust Macron to resolve this, notes a Verian poll published in Le Figaro. Dissent over €18 billion in Ukraine aid and 1.1 million asylum applications grows. Les nouveau-Miserables of an elite-run country that destroys its own nation have increasingly little to lose. As did the 1789 peasants who defied Versailles.
BREAKING – The French government collapses.
And now they are now demanding impeachment or resignation of Macron.
The entire country will be brought to a standstill in 2 days time as the people take to the streets to demand change.
We hear you France 🔥 pic.twitter.com/ekFoW7lKuh
— Bernie (@Artemisfornow) September 8, 2025
Waiting in the wings, and not silently by any stretch of the imagination, is the third piece of Macron’s tragi-comic soap opera – the woman he made sure would no longer be a political threat.
Marine Le Pen, National Rally’s fiery and much rehabilitated leader, was hauled up on embezzlement charges and found guilty in March of this year, just as Macron’s fortunes were tanking and her polling numbers were ascendant.
…I’m just going to lay this out here before we get to the court case.
Le Pen beats all other presidential candidates with ease in final poll before expulsion court hearing
Marine Le Pen stands poised to win the 2027 presidential election in France unless the courts disqualify her from running, new polling published just hours before a court hearing to determine her future has shown.
On Sunday, a new Ifop survey for Le Journal du Dimanche showed Le Pen leading in every run-off scenario, making her the undeniable frontrunner and obvious candidate of the right-wing National Rally.
In an astonishing turn of events, especially for France, which has a long and distinguished tradition of convicted political embezzlers in government (you almost give an honest French politician the side-eye, it’s that well established)(if you can find one, I mean), Le Pen was immediately banned from running in any elections for the next five years, even though her case is still under review and appeal. The immediate ban part of her sentence was ‘executed provisionally‘ and had some serious blowback, as it was a circumstance so rare, observers couldn’t help but feel it was punitively targeted and politically designed solely to rid the Left of the troublesome populist blonde.
Le Pen’s appeal trial isn’t scheduled to begin until January 2026. There is some thought that Macron will call another snap election to extricate himself both from this current mess (he had to wait a year between elections) and to cut Le Pen out of a possible run should she have her sentence modified or overturned by the appeals court for the scheduled 2027 election.
Macron is a devious twit, but Le Pen is on to him.
…Le Pen warned that the anger of French voters should not be underestimated if she were barred from running, saying such a scenario could render the elections illegitimate.
But she has also asked her top lieutenant Jordan Bardella, 29, to prepare for a run, saying in an interview that he “may have to take up the torch”.
Bardella, Le Pen’s protege who replaced her as head of the National Rally in 2022, is widely seen as her heir apparent.
The announcement came as French Prime Minister François Bayrou is widely expected to fall in a confidence vote in parliament later Monday after just nine months in the job, sparking fresh political uncertainty for France.
According to the headline of a Politico EU article I can’t get into, she is also gameplanning a run regardless of her legal status if snap elections are called. Should be fun.
As of this moment, Macron has ruled out calling elections and is rumored to be on the hunt for yet another Prime Minister; good luck to him with that. Whoever would take the gig is going to have the same hard, make that ‘impossible’ row to hoe.
…After the vote, Mr Macron’s office said he “takes note” of the result and would appoint Mr Bayrou’s replacement “in the next few days”.
The move suggests the French president will ignore growing calls to dissolve parliament and resign, and instead try to appoint a consensus figure to pass a budget in the deeply divided national assembly.
However, there are doubts over whether any new figure will be able to pull together a working coalition.
The Socialists, who only command 66 seats in parliament, have offered to run the government at the risk of losing the support of the conservative Republicans.
Herding les chats is a thankless job, especially when there’s a tigress prowling in the undergrowth, ready and willing to bite your head off. As well as knowing, for all the effort and danger, sympathy is on the side of the tigress.
And Macron still has to get through ‘Not Gonna Do Nuthin’ Day’ or whatever they’re calling it this time.
Pfft.
This is totally French, n’est-ce pas?
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