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'High-tension politics': As Barnier pushes ahead with high-stakes budget, 'will govt stand or fall'?
FRANCE 24 English
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12/2/2024
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00:00
Well, to get a wider view on it all now, we can cross-lecture at Queen Mary University
00:03
in London.
00:04
Mr. Andrew Smith, thanks for being with us and your time.
00:07
Can I start by asking you, how unusual or likely do you think it is to see the far right
00:15
and the left team up to try and bring the Prime Minister down?
00:19
Well, it's unusual in that we know how strongly they are opposed to each other in political
00:28
terms.
00:29
But ultimately, what they're trying to do is both to put pressure on the government.
00:34
And while it seems unusual to see them kind of aligning together, I think what's more
00:38
unusual is almost to see the government bending to the whims of the far right.
00:43
At the minute, I think there's a real issue.
00:45
The Barney government has this kind of big debate between expediency and decency.
00:51
How much can it bend, how much can it give in terms of this negotiation around the budget
00:56
to the far right without actually looking like it's in alliance and governing in alliance
01:01
with the far right?
01:02
We've seen already Marine Le Pen's party has made demands about dropping taxes on electricity.
01:08
They're trying to make demands around kind of pensions, demands around all sorts of other
01:13
things and medication, for example, which the government is trying to use as part of
01:18
this kind of austerity drive to make savings.
01:21
And we saw on Friday, of course, international markets like Standard & Poor's kind of maintained
01:26
France's rating, but very much placed an emphasis on the fact that Barney had to deliver those
01:31
promises of austerity.
01:32
And already we can see international markets, the way that banks lend to France is starting
01:37
to kind of pull apart from the way they lend to Germany, for example.
01:40
And France is very much borrowing on the same type of structures as Greece.
01:44
So we can see internationally there's a lot of pressure on this budget, but obviously
01:47
domestically as well.
01:49
There's a lot of sense that this budget needs to deliver because there's a huge amount of
01:53
anger against the government in particular.
01:55
Indeed.
01:56
And as you say, a fine balance in how much do you concede and how much will your action
02:01
strengthen or weaken the opposition parties in parliament?
02:05
You know, Marine Le Pen, it is the strongest, the largest individual party in the French
02:10
parliament now.
02:11
Do you see this party, which for so long had been in the opposition, do you think it's
02:14
now moving towards a position to be ready to govern?
02:18
Well, it very much wants to cast itself as being, of course, the de diabolos, like detoxified
02:24
and all the rest of it.
02:25
But, of course, recently we've seen exactly the reasons that that toxification is really
02:30
a detoxification is a mirage.
02:32
Marine Le Pen, of course, standing trial at the moment.
02:35
And we've heard about the possibility of her being excluded from politics when that trial
02:41
rules next March.
02:44
The corruption that's been accused, that kind of dirty politics behind all of it is
02:48
a sign of what's to come with that type of party.
02:51
And this is a real strategic thing from them as well.
02:54
This is the maximum leverage they have over the government.
02:57
This is the big moment when they can make their presence felt, the sort of the gravity,
03:01
the pull they're exerting on the government's policies.
03:05
And because, of course, if they join together, if they vote the government out, you need
03:08
to put a new government together, might well rob them of that power to lean on the government
03:13
at the same time.
03:14
And so this is useful.
03:15
It helps draw attention, political attention away from Marine Le Pen's trial.
03:19
It helps exert more of their priorities on the government.
03:22
And it helps kind of create this image of chaos in parliament, which I think is very
03:26
useful, I think, to the far right in terms of leveraging and ratcheting up that tension.
03:32
It's really a strategy of tension, I think, from the far right to try and impose themselves
03:37
upon the governmental agenda.
03:39
Because indeed, if, should Michel Barnier decide to push through this budget without
03:43
a vote in parliament, and then we see the parties come together, the opposition come
03:46
together to vote no confidence, France can't hold more legislative elections for another
03:53
year.
03:54
So, you know, how bad could it get for France then?
03:55
They'd be left in stalemate.
03:56
Well, it's a real challenge.
03:58
We are at the moment trapped in the structures of the Fifth Republic, reliving a crisis from
04:03
the Fourth Republic of cabinet instability, while many of its politicians sort of cosplay
04:09
a psychodrama of the Third Republic of the extreme right and extreme left.
04:13
Of course, the last time a government like this fell to a motion of censure was way back
04:17
in October 1962, when Georges Pompidou, his prime minister for President Charles de Gaulle,
04:23
fell.
04:24
Of course, what happened then?
04:25
De Gaulle dissolved the assembly.
04:26
Macron has already done that.
04:27
He's used that card already.
04:29
A dissolution is not going to happen.
04:31
What are we left with instead then?
04:32
Well, you know, we know there are kind of provisions to try and kind of bump over the
04:37
last year's budget.
04:38
That'll have problems in terms of inflation, in terms of international obligations, in
04:43
terms of Europe and so on.
04:45
But likewise, the government will try to use, of course, 49.3.
04:48
We know this very well.
04:49
To pass it, that's what's going to open it up to the motion of censure.
04:52
Down the line, there's the potential of what we know as Article 47, which might allow the
04:58
government to promulgate a finance bill if it's been debated for 70 days without a vote.
05:05
That's a challenge because if the government falls, bills should fall with it.
05:08
There's a big debate around constitutional law in terms of that.
05:10
But I think what we're seeing here is a stress testing of the Fifth Republic constitution.
05:15
This is, I think, in part the result of governing by decree, that 49.3, of failing to build
05:22
those alliances in the assembly, instead passing that debate to the Senate, where it's more
05:26
favorable to the government.
05:28
And this is really the difficulty of trying to govern with these types of tactics.
05:32
We saw, of course, last Thursday, as debates raged into the late into night on Thursday,
05:38
there was nearly blows in Parliament between a centrist and a socialist deputy.
05:42
So this is high tension politics.
05:45
This is really a moment of extreme stress.
05:48
But we hear that Michel Barnier is zen-like at its center.
05:52
So whatever falls, I feel Michel Barnier will try to present a calm face, try to push this
05:57
through.
05:58
And, well, I think there's a lot to come this week.
06:00
And we'll know by Wednesday, one way or another, if this government will stand or fall.
06:05
Indeed.
06:06
And then, you know, even here in France, Andrew, before we let you go, some people are saying
06:09
that it's not even Michel Barnier should be the one that should go, but Emmanuel Macron
06:14
himself.
06:15
Well, absolutely.
06:16
The electoral kind of path to this is, you know, there is no possibility for a legislative
06:21
election and people are clinging on to this idea.
06:24
Maybe Emmanuel Macron would somehow resign and open himself up to a presidential election.
06:29
Personally, I think that is extremely unlikely.
06:32
Emmanuel Macron is under no compulsion to do so.
06:35
The idea under the Fifth Republic of the president is that this sort of, you know, parliamentary
06:40
mess beneath the president is meant to sort of insulate the president from this.
06:44
So there is no kind of direct trigger that would say this.
06:47
It would have to be an act of kind of like real kind of political attempt to kind of
06:52
impose oneself and accept responsibility, et cetera, et cetera.
06:56
But I think Macron will see this as being the problems of the prime minister.
06:59
And as we know, the prime minister has a problem.
07:02
You can always have another.
07:04
So this is the difficulty, I think.
07:05
The president, I think, very unlikely to open himself up to that type of vote until 2027,
07:10
when he is actually, you know, constitutionally forced to do so.
07:14
I think this is very much a problem of parliament and very much a problem for the prime minister.
07:19
Andrew Smith, Queen Mary University, thanks very much indeed for joining us here on France
07:22
24.
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