Macron is isolated after falling prime minister and political crisis in France

The French government has grouped again in the midst of political paralysis that has lasted more than a year. Prime Minister François Bayrou was defeated on Monday (8) at the National Assembly by 364 votes to 194, in a vote of confidence.

Nine months after taking office, President Emmanuel Macron’s ally has become the fourth head of government to fall since 2023. The crisis exposes the isolation of the Macron political group, thanks now to indicate a fifth award in less than two years.

Instability coincides with a mobilization calendar: on September 10, unions promise to stoppage under the motto “Let’s block everything” (“Let us block everything”); Eight days later, the intersindical calls on a new national strike.

Recent surveys indicate that Macron’s approval fell to 15%, worse than at the height of the yellow vests revolt in 2018 and 2019.

The unsubmissive left took advantage of Bayrou’s fall to expand the pressure. Parliamentary leader Mathilde Panot said that “the Bayrou government was severely defeated and its budget of social violence and cruelty was overthrown.”

He then announced that his bench will present a motion of dismissal against Macron. “Doesn’t the president not want to change his policies? So we will have to change president,” he said.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of Insubmissa France, classified the vote as a popular victory. “Only a third of the assembly supported Bayrou, and even part of his base abandoned him,” he said. For him, the decision reflected not only the parliamentary rejection, but also the fear of the mobilization expected for this week.

The economic dispute is central to the clash. Bayrou spent days repeating in interviews that France was “a catastrophe” and needed to submit to market discipline. Mélenchon contested: “The state budget is not like a family budget, because you decide your revenues.”

According to him, the departure is to streamline the economy through employment and consumption, and not reduce social expenses. “When someone hires at the minimum wage, he spends the entire salary, pays taxes and increases state revenue,” said Melenchon in an interview on television.

Bayrou austerity measures included freezing social benefits and cutting two national holidays, rejected from the left and also by the far right of Marine Le Pen. With public debt equivalent to 114%of GDP and a deficit of 5.8%, above the European limit of 3%, Macron insists on budget cuts in response.

In Parliament, socialists and republicans try to explore the impasse. Boris Vallaud, leader of the PS, demanded that Macron “do his duty” and names a socialist Prime Minister. Already Laurent Wauquiez of the Republicans, stated that he would never accept a government influenced by the Nova Popular Front program. The internal division is visible: in the motion against Bayrou, the conservative bench divided between supporting and rejecting the prime minister.

Marine Le Pen reinforced the climate of instability. For the deputy of the far right national meeting, the dissolution of parliament “will not be an option, but an obligation” if Macron respects democracy. She went further and described the fall as “the end of the agony of a ghost government.”

For unsubmissive France, the crisis is not only resolved by exchanging heads of government. Panot stated that “either Macron may be deprived, or may renounce” and defended institutional changes.

Mélenchon resumed the flag of a 6th Republic, with mechanisms of popular revocation of mandates. The bet is that the departure undergoes popular mobilization and a break with the semi -representation model of the 5th Republic.

Communist Stéphane Peu summed up the dilemma with irony: Bayrou was just the fourth “soldier” to fall to save Macron. The metaphor echoes the perception that the succession of prime ministers acts as a sacrifice to maintain an increasingly fragile president. Between the austerity imposed by the center and the advance of the far right, the unsubmissive left tries to occupy the political vacuum with the defense of more investments, strengthening public services and democratic refounding.