Predictable fall of the French government at a critical moment

The entire left, from Oliver Faure's Socialist Party to Jean-Luc Mélenchon's more extremist La France Insoumise, has already announced that it will vote against the motion, as has Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally. As a result, President Emmanuel Macron will be further weakened, as Bayrou will be, after the motion of no confidence against Michel Barnier, the second head of government to be disavowed by the National Assembly in just one year. 

Faced with the intransigence of the political forces in accepting his diagnosis of the country's excessive debt, François Bayrou sought to convince public opinion of the merits of his proposals for austerity and cuts ‘at a critical moment for the country’. To this end, he launched an intense media campaign, appearing successively in the press, on the radio and on television, in an attempt to demonstrate the divorce between the country and the political class. 

The manoeuvre had the opposite effect, and popular tension increased. Accustomed to a generous welfare state, which has made the country one of the most generous in terms of benefits and social assistance, the French are now unwilling to accept measures such as cutting the national budget by €44 billion, eliminating two public holidays per year to help pay off the enormous €3.3 trillion debt, freezing pensions, reducing many areas of social assistance and, finally, the foreseeable and simultaneous increase in taxes, when direct taxation alone amounts to 45.6% for citizens, according to Eurostat data. 

If the political class is inclined towards early general and presidential elections, the people do not seem to be changing their protest habits much either. For example, a rather nebulous movement has emerged, called Bloqueemos Todo (Let's Block Everything), which is announcing a total paralysis of the country on 10 September, just two days after the vote of confidence is debated. This is very similar to the Yellow Vests, which marred the end of Macron's first term and the beginning of his second.
As if this were not enough, a campaign has emerged with the slogan ‘Nicolas, the one who pays for everything’, which aims to synthesise in a character called Nicolas the weariness of the average French person, who is supposed to work hard and pay what they consider to be quasi-confiscatory taxes, as a result of which they feel increasingly deprived of what they believe they deserve for their efforts. He barely climbs the social and economic ladder, weighed down by a system that cuts his purchasing power under the pretext of meeting a growing number of social burdens. 

The campaign is causing a stir and has managed to divide the country, as while self-proclaimed progressive politicians point to Nicolas as ‘racist, classist and unsupportive, the perfect combination of libertarian authoritarianism’, those who claim to be in the centre and on the right of the political spectrum argue that he represents ‘the weariness of the average citizen, whose weary shoulders bear the overwhelming burden of benefits for pensioners, the unemployed, immigrants and families in precarious situations’.

Messages spread through the X network describe how France allocates 31.5% of its GDP to social spending, which is two points more than Germany and Italy, three points higher than Spain and four points higher than Denmark, concluding that this amount must be cut urgently.

‘Spend less; produce more’ is the conclusion reached by François Bayrou after his diagnosis of France's “critical” situation, which seems unlikely to prevent its downfall, ‘political suicide’ in the words of Renaissance, the movement that directly supports President Macron, whose MPs are consequently predicting a new and serious crisis in France. Perhaps it would be more realistic to point out that it is the same crisis, only that the deterioration is accelerating as the serious problems afflicting the country remain unresolved, and citizens are becoming increasingly dissatisfied as they find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.