France is confronted by a serious social crisis, morphing into a grave political crisis, which could become a regime crisis.
To be fair, political instability did not begin with Emmanuel Macron. It has been growing since 2000 when the presidential mandate was cut from seven to five years, rendering it coterminous with parliamentary elections and reducing the President of the Republic to little more than a super prime minister. But Macron has made things worse.
Now at only the beginning of his second term he survives with a hung parliament, obliged to get his flagship pension legislation by executive order for fear of defeat.
Where will this lead France in the next four years? Since 1789, France has had more changes of regime and more constitutions than any other democratic state. And of those 16 constitutions, the Fifth Republic has been the most consensual, albeit only since the 1980s. All other constitutions were under threat from parties or movements of the far left or right. Today’s Fifth Republic is finally reverting to type.
Since 1789, France has had more changes of regime and more constitutions than any other democratic state
On Wednesday an Elabe opinion poll asked respondents how they would vote in a re-run of the 2022 presidential election. Marine Le Pen was comfortably ahead of Macron in the first round (31 to 23 per cent) and convincingly triumphed over him in the second (55 to 45 per cent). Meanwhile a 27 March Ifop poll on the composition of a new National Assembly, following possible dissolution, put the Rassemblement National as the largest party on 26 per cent (from 19.2) with the presidential party reduced to 22 per cent (from 26) and with the radical left Nupes stagnating on 26 per cent. Nupes, or its largest grouping, overtly favours a Sixth Republic. The RN is committed to the Fifth Republic, but is determined to operate it very differently with much more recourse to referendums on major issues, such as immigration.
Trade union leaders and political observers say that if Macron’s pension law is upheld by the Constitutional Council on 14 April, an RN victory in future elections is assured. As opinion polls demonstrate, Marine Le Pen’s detoxification of her party and most recently the portrayal of RN MPs as responsible potential government material is paying dividends. Polls show the RN doing well among voters who are not its natural electorate, such as women and the upper middle classes. Meanwhile amongst its base of working class voters the RN now scores a massive 49 per cent, a vote not seen since the glory days of the French Communist party in the 1950s.
The RN is also the most united and disciplined party. This contrasts with divisions amongst the Nupes coalition and disunity among the Macronist centrist bloc, who have as yet no candidate for 2027, even if former prime minister Edouard Philippe is best placed on 26 per cent (Macron’s old score). Le Pen’s conundrum is that presidential victory would be unlikely to produce an RN absolute majority in the National Assembly. obliging her to seek alliance partners and exposing her to reliving Macron’s plight today.
The Fifth Republic was not designed to have a president without an absolute majority. When that happened under ‘cohabitation’ in the 1980s and 1990s with president and prime minister of different political colour, it did so because president and parliament were elected for different durations (seven and five years) and were compelled to work together.
Today’s operating procedure with a president without a working majority, three parliamentary groupings ideologically at loggerheads and no clear opposition, recalls the Fourth Republic, swept away in 1958 by de Gaulle’s polite ‘coup d’état’ of 13 May. The Fourth Republic had a reputation for political instability and paralysis, with governments overturned on average every six months. It has become a by-word for political failure. But for a political crisis to morph into a crisis of regime requiring a new political system demands either revolution or a coup d’état, or more prosaically complete paralysis of the country.
We are not there yet. But France’s political state is remarkably fragile and French belief in her political institutions far worse than other European democracies, as a major recent study shows. France is at a turning point; but as history regularly demonstrates, they do not always turn.
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