A new Anglo-Saxon barbarism has entered the French political language: ‘government shutdown.’ There is excited talk of civil servants not being paid. Tax uncollected. The collapse of medical reimbursements. Supposedly this will bring France to its senses and voters will quietly accept increased taxes and cuts to public services.
The French government teeters on the verge of collapse. Prime Minister Michel Barnier, 73, acclaimed genius of the Brexit negotiations, had one job: to deliver a budget. He failed. His text isn’t acceptable to the National Assembly. He is now desperately threatening to force it through, under an emergency decree. But if he does he will be brought down in a vote of censure in which the left and the forces of Marine Le Pen will unite – and then what?
Michel Barnier, acclaimed genius of the Brexit negotiations, had one job: to deliver a budget. He failed
Perhaps unfortunately, a government shutdown seems an overblown threat, as the government prepares to raid French bank accounts, for the taxe foncière. But the prime minister is currently on the thinnest of ice. He was brought in as a technocrat, a master of dossiers. He is as dull as an omelette without salt. A ski instructor snorts a contemptuous political rival.
He has slides, decks, all the numbers. But what he’s selling, nobody’s buying. Hundreds of amendments have been hung on his budget bill, hundreds discarded. The finest minds of the finance ministry have been applied. I wrote here of his plan. That was six weeks ago. We still have no budget.
Barnier insists that there will be one, and it is essential. But he’s a leader without followers. Macron is openly contemptuous of the prime minister and is going around Paris saying he expects the government to collapse sooner rather than later.
Barnier was initially welcomed by French voters as a Monsieur Normal, a grown-up, parachuted in to restore stability after the president’s strange and unexplained dissolution of the National Assembly in June. But really, he’s past it. Why did he imagine taking this job was a good idea? His failure is inevitable in a country faced with the alarming prospect of living within its means.
Will the lights go out on the Eiffel Tower? Will the blinds go down at the Post Office? It’s never open anyway. Obviously the idea of a shutdown, just like they have in America, has civil servants in a panic. Much as a little more vacation might be appealing, who wants to be judged non-essential?
Will there be a budget by Christmas? If not, what are the practical implications? By Barnier’s own rhetoric this is not simply a budget to pay the schoolteachers and so on. It was supposed to be the budget when France finally bites the bullet and starts paying back the €3.2 trillion debt it owes, while curbing the country’s astronomical 6 per cent deficit, about which the EU tries not to make too much of a fuss.
There are the usual warnings of financial market turmoil and France can’t really go bankrupt but it does seem that the French have not learned from previous great national Ponzi schemes such as the Money Mania of 1719.
Over in the Elysée, what will Macron do next? It looks like his authority has vanished but he still has moves to play. Without a government and with no new Assembly elections possible until June 2025, he could declare an emergency and simply rule by decree for six or seven months.
I have raised this before as a constitutional possibility. I don’t see Macron resigning. He has too high an opinion of himself. Might he rather fancy being a de facto dictator for a while? He certainly revels in transgression. I doubt, however, that he’ll want the aggravation.
Into this entropic political situation enters Marine Le Pen. Appropriately, as a breeder of Bengals, she has become the political version of Schrödinger’s cat.
She could save the government if she wants to, although she probably doesn’t, and could well be the next president of France. With the centre struggling, perhaps winning a runoff against Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2027, Marine Le Pen could be handed the keys to the fleet of presidential jets and the launch codes for the force de frappe.
Or she could be in jail and disqualified from office, for alleged embezzlement of the European Parliament by employing party functionaries from European Parliament budgets. The trial ended this week. We’re now waiting for the judges to rule. The maximum penalty is demanded by prosecutors – three years in prison and disqualification from public office. This smells like lawfare since many of the events concerned occurred 20 years ago. That the parliament is used as a piggy bank by its members is meanwhile as shocking as gambling at Rick’s Café.