France’s love affair with mythological political figures is well-documented. It stretches all the way back to the late 18th and early 19th century, with figures like Robespierre, Talleyrand and, of course, Napoleon Bonaparte. In fact, the legendary status of Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte’s uncle is a major reason why he was elected president of the country’s second republic. Despite living in exile for the majority of his life, leading a couple of disastrous attempts at a coup d’état and being branded a cretin by future president Adolphe Tiers, Louis cantered to victory with more than 74% of the votes. As Karl Marx remarked in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, his name was enough to inspire hope among the peasantry that “man named Napoleon would bring all glory back to them.”
This phenomenon is not restricted to the early history of a fledgling France. Merely alluding to Napoleon’s name has brought success to modern politicians, not least Charles Napoleon, le petit corporal’s great-great-grandnephew. After relocating from Paris to Ajaccio—his ancestor’s Corsican birthplace—and securing an upset win with a left-wing coalition, Charles noted, “One cannot escape one’s history.”
That such invocations of France’s mythic historical figures are now failing the current ruling forces is evidence of the dire political state that the country finds itself in.
Former French premier ministre François Bayrou found this out the hard way at the end of his tenure. As a decisive vote of no-confidence of his own creation loomed on the horizon, Bayrou’s last roll of the dice involved dredging up the past. In front of over 550 representatives in the Assemblée nationale, he echoed the words of the mythical Charles De Gaulle in order to justify his proposed austerity measures. “A country that is incapable of balancing public finances,” he declared, “is a country that is giving up.”
De Gaulle is another of France’s fabled leaders, a one-man incarnation of the France libre government following Nazi invasion in World War II. At a time when other political figures were deserting the country or siding with the enemy in Vichy France, De Gaulle was a totemic presence, embodying the desire for Liberté, one of the three central tenets of post-1789 France. His influence continued after the war, as he served as premier ministre before founding the Fifth Republic, the current iteration of the nation’s governance, in 1958 and being elected as its president with an overwhelming percentage of the vote, showing his appeal across party lines.
As desperate measures go, Bayrou’s reference to the enduring legacy of De Gaulle was not so much misguided as it was futile. His subsequent defeat was regarded as a foregone conclusion, with the leaders of the biggest factions in government already announcing that they would vote against the incumbent. Shortly after his speech, the Assemblée’s lack of faith in Bayrou was confirmed, with 364 députés calling for his resignation. Not even appealing to one of the dominant figures of French mythos was enough to rescue him from his fate. The day after the collapse of the Bayrou government, he was replaced by the somewhat inconspicuous Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu.
Ironically enough, mentioning the former president also represented an unintended premonition of Bayrou’s own doom. He becomes the fourth prime minister to lose his job in the space of three years, a period of tumult that echoes the uncertainty and anxiety at the outset of the Fifth Republic in 1958, when De Gaulle was in charge.
Like the Général then, current president Emmanuel Macron now finds himself at an impasse. Tasked with selecting a fifth prime minister in three years—and a fourth since the beginning of 2024—, it seems unlikely that the president will be able to appease the growing crowd of enemies calling for his proverbial head. Even more worryingly, there remains the issue of France’s spiralling debt crisis. Indeed, the country’s deficit problems caused the demise of its last two premiers—Michel Barnier and Bayrou—who were unable to adequately redress the matter, their proposed budgetary measures going down like lead balloons.
This constitutes another catastrophe for the beleaguered president; not only has another government collapsed without resolving France’s financial woes, but Bayrou’s ousting also indicates a broader, more fundamental failure of Macron’s tenets as a leader. Regardless of the charm offensive he employs overseas, he cannot seem to convince the French public and its representatives of his philosophy.
During his time in office, Macron’s domestic focus has been to ensure that France resist the trend of more radical parties riding the populist wave and ascending to power that has swept across the West over the last decade. Immediately following his election in 2017, the press was abuzz with praise and premonitions of him becoming Europe’s major head of state for the next decade and an antidote to “populist, anti-establishment” views.
Although he has refused the moniker centriste in the past, Macron was viewed as the embodiment of the democratic values that extremist parties sought to undermine, thus becoming their natural foil. This dichotomy was cemented by the manner of his victory, as he defeated France’s most notorious right-wing figure, Marine Le Pen, in the final round of presidential elections in 2017, before repeating the feat five years later. With all the promise surrounding the then-39-year-old, it looked as though his fate as the next great hope for French—and indeed European—politics was written in the stars and that he was destined inscribe his name into the annals of his country’s history in a way that has eluded many of his predecessors.
In the space of seven years, that image of a dazzling, mold-breaking Macron has corroded, replaced by the belief held by a significant proportion of the populace and politicians that he is stubbornly leading France down a path of financial ruin and political turmoil. His fall from grace has manifested in a string of damning political defeats, chief among them the majority seized by Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s Rassemblement national in 2024’s European Parliament elections, at the expense of the centrist party backed by Macron. This prompted Macron to gamble, dissolving parliament and calling a snap election that he was banking on restoring “a clear majority in serenity and harmony“.
However, this did not materialise. Macron’s moderate allies suffered losses, while more explicit left- and right-wing factions, notably those spearheaded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and RN, saw marked gains. The result was a hung parliament, a representation of Macron’s own stuttering ideology and a metaphor for his handle on the radical, populist forces that he was promised to stymie slowly slipping away.
For the majority of the Fifth Republic, two major parties duked it out in legislative elections—Le parti socialiste on the centre-left, and Union pour un mouvement populaire, previously Rassemblement pour la République, representing centre-right Gaullist policies. In recent years, the battleground of French politics has shifted away from the typical left-right duality and instead towards a dichotomy between Macron’s centrist ideology on one side, and Le Pen, Mélenchon and more extreme entities from both sides of the divide on the other. In the eyes of many pundits, Macron’s primary aim should have been to fend off the encroaching tide of radicalism that threatened to destabilise democracy with his centrist doctrine.
If the chaos and disappointing results of last year’s elections were an indication of Macronism misfiring in this regard, the political turmoil since then signifies its complete failure. Twice since July 2024 have prime ministers have called votes of no confidence, and twice have they soundly been defeated. What’s more, Macron’s decision to install Barnier as prime minister was the result of negotiations with Le Pen, an indication that the balance of power in France has shifted rightwards, or at the very least away from the centre he incarnates.
One thing is certain—Macron’s days are numbered. Though he is determined to remain French president until the end of his term in 2027, he will be unable to run for the top job again after that. The real question now is whether the fiascos and failures, particularly in his second term, have soured the perception of the French centre, centre-left and centre-right ahead of these next elections. This would be the ultimate failure of Macronism: opening the door to the very extremist parties that he was purported to keep at bay. Although opinion polls broadly indicate that the favourite for the next election would be moderate candidate and former Macron PM Édouard Philippe, RN and Bardella’s rising popularity among young voters highlights that the contest is likely to be more closely fought than ever before,
This would be the ultimate failure of Macronism: opening the door to the very extremist parties that he was purported to keep at bay.
Now, Macron has turned once again to his allies, the centrist Renaissance party, for the next prime minister of the republic. It will be Sébastien Lecornu’s task to balance France’s books, while attempting to appease all sides of the nation’s fractured Assemblée. This will be a tall order, not only because of the roughly €3.35 trillion deficit that France is currently running, but also because Macron’s main foes on the left and right—Mélenchon and Le Pen—were quick to express their disapproval with the president’s choice.
Macron is not only facing backlash from the political class, however. On 10th September, the day after Lecornu was confirmed as PM, public protests erupted all over l’Hexagone, calling on its citizens to “block everything” (“Bloquons tout”) and paralysing public transport networks. It marks yet another stride away from the stability that the president desperately needs and upon which his ideology is predicated.
Staring down the barrel once again, it seems like Macron will need a miracle if he is to leave office with his head held high and his ideology intact. At this point, even invoking the legendary ghosts of France’s political past is unlikely to be a match for this Gordian knot.
Leave a comment