By David Broder

Copyright newstatesman

So short-lived is the average French government, losing another one hardly seems historic. After nine months as prime minister before resigning on 9 September, François Bayrou is not quite France’s answer to Liz Truss; he lasted three times as long as his predecessor, Michel Barnier. Yet Bayrou is the first prime minister in the Fifth Republic’s history to be toppled after calling a confidence vote in his own government (in Barnier’s case, the decision was made for him). President Emmanuel Macron is expected to appoint a successor in coming days: France’s fifth prime minister since January 2024.

Bayrou’s defeat in the confidence vote – with 364 against to just 194 for – was unsurprising. His coalition of Macronites and conservatives had passed hardly any legislation, and survived the left’s censure motions only because other opposition groups abstained. In tabling the confidence vote on 8 September, Bayrou made an unlikely bid for a wider mandate, hoping the opposition would endorse his plan for €44bn (£38bn) in spending cuts. Was he simply giving up? Speaking to Le Monde newspaper, an adviser defended Bayrou by insisting the confidence vote would educate the public: the prime minister wanted to “raise general awareness about the issue of debt”.

A long-time Christian-democrat, Bayrou has often cast himself as a crusader against excessive deficits. Back in 1993, he compared France to a family living on credit; it was a key theme of his 2007 presidential campaign. Appointed as prime minister last December, he named deficit reduction as a central priority, a “moral, and not only financial problem”. The issue, he argued, was that this generation was living at the expense of the next, effectively imposing “taxes on our children”. As premier, he spoke of the country as if it was on the brink of disaster.

Bayrou’s tone often exaggerated the idea that he was a lone realist voice, telling the public what it didn’t want to hear about an unsustainable welfare system. His call for France to drop two bank holidays, including VE Day, strikingly symbolised an offensive against the post-1945 social model. Yet this provocation was also a typical Macronite approach: insisting that social protections are too expensive, and that the French ought to change how they think about them. While the Macron camp’s voter base is strongest among over-60s, Bayrou criticised complacent “boomers” who think “that everything is just fine”.

This government included staunch right-wingers such as Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, and on immigration Bayrou spoke of a “feeling of submersion”. Yet his political survival always ultimately relied on difficult accommodations for the centre-left opposition. The Socialist Party had boosted its numbers in the summer 2024 snap elections by running as part of the freshly-launched, left-leaning alliance New Popular Front, but it then carved out a more compromising position. This opposition even proposed its own deficit reduction plan, with a tax burden more heavily weighted towards the rich. Yet Bayrou refused such a move, instead attempting to bounce the Socialists into giving him a mandate through a confidence vote. In this, he failed.

If France has usurped Italy as the homeland of grinding political crisis, its ills speak to deeper problems hurting governments around the West. Bayrou has argued for decades that his country needs to stop living on credit. Yet, the issue is especially explosive today because, as low growth becomes the norm and the population gets older, few believe that belt tightening is a temporary measure that will prepare the way for future prosperity. Instead, even recent unpopular measures to cut back social protections, notably the 2023 hike in the retirement age, have been followed by government calls for even further cuts to the pension bill. Falling confidence in public institutions makes it harder to swallow cuts in the name of a notional social compact.

Have the austerity dogmas imposed during the Eurozone crisis returned? During the Covid-19 pandemic, European Union leaders had taken a different course, relaxing budget constraints while propping up private business with new investment. In Italy, the biggest beneficiary of the EU’s Next Generation post-pandemic funding scheme, this has surely been a major factor underpinning the stability of Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. Yet in France, the pandemic period saw the public debt balloon, without any similar surge in new infrastructure investment. Now that EU authorities are tightening fiscal discipline, France – a country that has long exceeded nominal borrowing limits – is under particular pressure to conform.

With economic growth feeble, inequality rising, and funds cut for everything but the military, some insist the question is who should pay. French politics are still shaped by a kind of social mobilisation that is rare elsewhere in Europe. Even ahead of Bayrou’s confidence vote, calls for a day of nationwide industrial action on 10 September gained traction on social media, with the online slogan “let’s block everything” drawing backing from left-wing parties as well as the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) trade union, and activists across the major cities. The movement has some of the decentralised spirit of the Gilets Jaunes protests of 2018-20, with their signature distrust of party politics, call for more direct democracy, and demands for a halt to austerity.

The public anger may pose problems for the main opposition party, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). Though often stereotyped as the voice of France’s “left behind”, it also uses a rhetoric of responsibility to win over parts of the French middle classes who already lean towards right-wing politics. The party avoided bringing down Bayrou in earlier key votes, has shelved its more anti-EU and Nato-critical positions, and has adopted its own targeted calls for budget cuts. Speaking to Le Figaro in the week leading up to Bayrou’s ousting, former president Nicolas Sarkozy even recognised RN as part of the “republican arc”, further undermining the decades-old Gaullist cordon sanitaire against it.

Le Pen’s party thrives on ambiguity: it damns specific Macronite austerity measures, while vaguely promising to cut spending by combatting government waste and over-demanding immigrants. This does not place it alongside the picket lines and blockades likely to be seen on France’s streets. Le Pen herself remains barred from running for election due to her recent embezzlement conviction, at least until an appeal to be heard in early 2026. If no new government forms and snap elections are announced in coming weeks, Le Pen may try to force a quicker court ruling on her eligibility.

No such elections have been called yet, and Macron’s camp could attempt some new coalition arrangement, perhaps attempting to integrate the Socialists via a centre-left figurehead or technocratic leadership. Yet, even this idea faces major problems: Macron has barely 18 months left in office, and few potential successors will want to associate themselves with his austerity agenda.

Bayrou promised tough decisions that might be unpopular in the short term but would pay off eventually. Yet France has heard this refrain too many times. Like incumbents around Europe, Macron has an impossible task: selling austerity to voters who’ve already lost faith in his remedies.

[See more: Don’t tell Emmanuel Macron — he’s a normal politician now]