ANDREW NEIL: Macron’s France is in a perfect storm and impossible to govern or reform. It won’t be long before citizens take to the streets again

Michel Barnier, the man who made rounds on the British side during the Brexit negotiations, faces an impending exit from his own country – as Prime Minister of France.

He will almost certainly lose a vote of no confidence in the French National Assembly today, bringing an ignominious end to his three-month premiership – the shortest in the history of the Fifth Republic (founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1958) and the first premiership . impeached by the French parliament since 1962.

Frankly, it’s not clear that anyone could have done a better job. Since President Macron, in an unfathomable rush of blood to the head, called parliamentary elections that he did not have to call in the summer, France has been stumbling towards being marked as ‘ungovernable’.

Barnier, who was appointed prime minister by Macron in early September largely because the president could find no one else to take over the job, struggled manfully to come up with £50 billion in spending cuts and tax increases to get a handle on France’s rising budget deficit . What was less than five percent of GDP two years ago is now more than six percent and is heading for an unsustainable seven percent within a few years.

But Barnier could not get parliament to support his austerity measures. Since the unnecessary elections, the National Assembly has been dominated by three groups: the hard-right National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen; the hard Left New Popular Front, whose figurehead is the eternal Corbynist inciter Jean-Luc Mélenchon; and what is left of Macron’s centrist supporters.

None are big enough to give any government a majority. An alliance between, for example, two of the three is out of the question, because they all hate each other too much to work together. Macron’s foolish election gamble has led to nothing but a debilitating political deadlock.

Barnier knew it was hopeless to get the first part of his budget through parliament, so he invoked Article 49.3 of the constitution, which essentially makes it law by decree.

This inevitably led to a vote of no confidence among the Mélenchon crowd. Barnier’s goose was done when Le Pen said she too had no confidence in him.

His likely demise means that his budget will also collapse. Macron is already looking for a new prime minister.

The French president was in the Middle East this week and focused on the need to “bring together the Lebanese people and implement the reforms necessary for the stability and security of the country.” He probably has a greater chance of that in Lebanon than in France.

The country where Macron is now barely president is in the midst of a perfect storm: a political, economic and financial crisis – the worst since workers rose up to join the rioting students in the infamous events of May 1968, which almost culminated in a new French Revolution. It may not be long before the French take to the streets again.

The French economy is stagnating, with growth as elusive as in Keir Starmer’s Britain, unemployment is rising (it’s already at 7.4 percent) and the industrial base is shrinking, while famous French names like Michelin face closures and layoffs plans in the new region. year.

The French stock market is struggling and foreign investors are avoiding a country they only recently considered the top European destination for their capital.

Government spending accounts for a whopping 57 percent of GDP (compared to Britain’s 45 percent), which marks France as a socialist rather than a market economy. Public debt is over 110 percent of GDP (less than 100 percent in Britain) and rising, with rising budget deficits. Spending on social services, including pensions, now amounts to an unsustainable 25 percent of GDP.

The more France borrows to spend, the more lenders demand higher returns.

For years, France was able to borrow cheaply by riding on Germany’s reputation for fiscal probity within the eurozone. Those days are over.

On Monday, the additional interest rate that France must pay to borrow over a ten-year period compared to the German ten-year benchmark bond reached the highest level since 2012. That gap will only widen as markets realize that France is in the grip of a political rigor mortis, which makes deficit reduction or reforms impossible.

The capital flight from France, which is already underway, can only accelerate. Let there be no doubt: as long as the current parliament holds sway, France is unreformable.

When Macron raised the retirement age for the state pension from 62 to 64, he sparked major protests over his pain.

Barnier’s cuts include delaying an inflation-linked increase in state pensions. This obviously worked as a red rag to a bull for Mélenchon et al. But interestingly enough, it was also a red line for Le Pen.

What makes reform virtually impossible in France today is that the hard right shares the hard left’s love for early retirement, costly social services and widespread state control.

Yet the situation is untenable. As France borrows more and more to meet the welfare demands of left and right, the cost of servicing its debts is soaring – from £44 billion this year to a predicted £62 billion over three years.

What happens next is difficult to predict, but it is unlikely to be good. Barnier will remain as caretaker until Macron chooses a successor.

But whichever hapless politician he chooses, he will have no more chance of winning a parliamentary majority than Barnier.

Macron also cannot call new elections, as he must constitutionally wait a year since he last embarked on that difficult path.

If things get really bad, he can invoke Article 16 of the Constitution, which allows a president to rule without the support of the National Assembly in times of crisis (also known as a dictatorship).

But Macron’s credibility with the French people has been so shattered that he no longer has the authority to govern in this way. People would undoubtedly take to the streets in large numbers.

France is in a feverish mood. Economic sclerosis, rolling layoffs and longer queues for benefits will further exacerbate this.

Macron can always resign. That’s what a majority of French people want him to do – almost 70 percent in a recent poll – and it would lead to new presidential elections. But Macron is unlikely to comply, especially since, as things stand, Le Pen would be his most likely successor.

Macron is thus left to fend for himself as his country stagnates, while his culpability for the current situation in France is increasingly recognised. Last year, one of France’s top political scientists described Macron as “an immature, narcissistic, arrogant child, deaf to others and somewhat incompetent.” That is now the national consensus.

De Gaulle created the Fifth Republic 66 years ago to turn France into a presidential democracy, because the parliamentary government of the Fourth Republic (1946-58) had proven chaotic, with more than twenty governments in twelve years.

In an act of arrogant stupidity, Macron – who once saw himself as the essence of presidential rule and even referred to himself as Jupiter, the supreme Roman god who stood above the daily fray – has returned France to the instability of the Fourth. Republic.

When Barnier was appointed Prime Minister in September, I suggested he might not last until Christmas. Some thought I was joking.

But I wasn’t: I know my history of the Fourth Republic.

If his successor takes over early next month, he or she may not last until Easter. France’s crisis will only worsen under a president who promised a brave new dawn but delivered a dangerous past of decline and despair.