France is facing a crisis not seen in almost 70 years \u2013 is it time for a Sixth Republic?<\/p>\n
The France of President Emmanuel Macron, who is really the egomaniac-in-chief, is somewhere on the spectrum between \u201cspiraling political crisis\u201d (Financial Times), \u201cbig trouble\u201d (The Economist) and terminal collapse. Again.
\nBarely a week after a new, if fragile, government was cobbled together in acute crisis mode, the country is bracing \u201cfor big anti-austerity street marches and labor strikes,\u201d while the state\u2019s finances are \u201cpernicious\u201d and the budget for 2026 a big question without an answer. In Paris, for instance, the Metro is semi-comatose; in the country as whole, a third of teachers are on strike.
\nAn earlier wave of protests \u2013 under the slogan \u201cLet\u2019s block everything\u201d\u2013 did not quite achieve that ambitious aim, but it did attract double the number of participants the authorities had expected. In that respect \u2013 even if they were different in their ideological background \u2013 the French protests resemble the recent \u2018Unite the Kingdom\u2019 rally in London. On both sides of the Channel, decrepit, unpopular, unresponsive Centrist regimes are barely hanging on now.
\nAs the French have taught us to say \u201cPlus \u00e7a change, plus c\u2019est la m\u00eame chose\u201d (\u201cThe more things change, the more they stay the same\u201d). Especially after Macron\u2019s two irresponsible and egotistic decisions of 2024, France can\u2019t find a way out of the mess he has created: first, he called snap parliamentary elections to then, second, ignore the will of the French voters.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
French government collapse: Will Macron learn any lessons?<\/p>\n
If Macron had respected the results of the elections that he himself initiated, he would have had to charge either a left-wing bloc, with the most combined votes, or the new-right Rassemblement National (RN), which obtained the most votes for a single party, with building a new government. Yet the man with a vast ego and an incredibly shrinking popularity base, clearly rejected by a preponderant majority of his people, felt he knew better. Since then Macron has tried to impose his will against parliament. The problem? Parliament won\u2019t agree.
\nSo, after what the YouTube channel of venerable left journal l\u2019Humanit\u00e9 calls \u201cthe parliamentary hara-kiri\u201d of the last politically short-lived prime minister, here we go again. Total deadlock at the political center; in the streets, picturesque unrest featuring traditional folklore, such as burning rubbish bins, baton-charging police, and teargas galore; and finally, yet another compulsive attempt by Macron the Unpopular to succeed with what keeps failing: installing a new \u2013 his fifth in less than two years \u2013 prime minister (his name is S\u00e9bastien Lecornu, but don\u2019t bother remembering) who has no majority in parliament and thus, cannot possibly pass the budget ex-investment banker Macron wants in order to get his kind of austeritarian-neoliberal handle on France\u2019s very real debt crisis. Please the rich, squeeze all others.\u00a0 \u00a0
\nIn short, since Macron refuses to either call fresh parliamentary elections or go away, let\u2019s do the doom loop again. That at least is a tempting reading of the current situation in Paris and the unfortunate country that its detached president plagues. And yet, perhaps things are different this time. As in, even worse. Maybe this crisis is not just bad-business-as-usual but a sign that a bigger political earthquake is coming, the kind that reshapes the landscape.
\nConsider for starters the intriguing frequency with which commentators are making historic comparisons. Two British experts discussing the French mess for the conservative British magazine Spectator could not help but recall that the French Revolution \u2013 the big one, 1789 \u2013 started with a debt crisis, too.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
France headed for \u2018black hole\u2019 \u2013 financial expert<\/p>\n
In France, heavy-weight journalist Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Tadde\u00ef is having thoughts of the Battle of Valmy \u2013 a French military victory that was however very much part of the Revolution. The Bastille had fallen more than a year before the battle, and the king would be guillotined less than half a year after it.
\nAnd the Financial Times cannot stop mentioning \u201c1958.\u201d That was the fatal year when France\u2019s previous constitution \u2013 the blueprint of the hapless, dysfunctional Fourth Republic established following WWII\u00a0\u2013\u00a0suffered cardiac arrest, to be replaced by the current iteration, the Fifth Republic. \u201cMacron\u2019s choices,\u201d the Financial Times sagely notes, \u201chave led to political turmoil not seen since 1958.\u201d Indeed.
\nLet that sink in: between 1948 and 1958, during the Fourth Republic, French governments changed, on average, every six months. Former uber-President Charles de Gaulle designed the Fifth Republic precisely to end this chronic instability. Now, wrecked by the worst combination of narcissism and over-reach since Napoleon III, the Fifth Republic itself is plagued by self-blockage and volatility. Bravo, Emmanuel! One for \u201cla grandeur!\u201d\u00a0Les \u201cslow claps\u201d\u00a0de l\u2019histoire will be yours forever.
\nMeanwhile, the ongoing Macronalypse is generating massive popular discontent because of increasing social inequality and anxiety combined with the authoritarian and manipulative habits of the president. No wonder some, for instance Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon \u2013 leading the non-Centrist (\u201cpopulist\u201d) left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) or LFI \u2013 are calling for a Sixth Republic, that is, yet another fundamental recasting of the constitution and political system.
\nSo, what is it going to be? An agonizing, slow slog through two more years of Macron\u2019s ego trip because that\u2019s how long his term lasts and he won\u2019t finally do the one decent thing he can still do for his country and resign? One nasty and not-so-little crisis after another?<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
\u2018Unite the Kingdom\u2019 is a harbinger of a Western European cataclysm<\/p>\n
Or is the Fifth Republic, De Gaulle\u2019s proud creation, now ruined by a bombastic and incompetent epigone, on the verge of becoming an Ancien Regime? The bad memory left behind once a revolution has happened?
\nThe RN\u2019s Marine Le Pen is certainly right about one thing: Macron\u2019s desperate attempt to sell his obstructive obstinacy as a struggle for political \u201cstability\u201d is deeply perverse. It is precisely his kind of \u201cstability\u201d \u2013 keeping a president without support in place to impose governments with even less support again and again, as if elections do not matter \u2013 that a clear majority of the French do not want. Instead they want genuine and urgently needed change.
\nWhat kind of change then? If you listen to the parties \u2013 on the New Left (LFI) and the New Right (RN), but not in the so-called center \u2013 that the French actually vote for, then they want an end to neo-liberal austeritarianism. They also agree on the need to regain true national sovereignty. On migration and economic policy, the left and right do not see eye to eye, but there is no doubt that, on both issues, the center is deeply unattractive.
\nIt may, moreover, be an irony of history that, in at least some key respects, the faux-Gaullist Macron may be swept away by things De Gaulle recognized as irking the French back in that annus horribilis of 1958. As he told us in the chapter\u00a0\u2018Renewal 1958-1962\u2019\u00a0of his \u2018Memoirs of Hope\u2019,\u00a0the 1958 crisis was not only about France\u2019s brutal and miserably failing colonial war in Algeria. It was also about the lopsided, nationally disadvantageous relationship to the EU\u2019s predecessor, the ECSC, and the at least equally detrimental one with both the US and NATO.
\nThe EU is already the target of explicit criticism from both the RN and the LFI. Both key RN leaders, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella keep reiterating that one of their aims is to stop wasting money on it. Both attack the EU\u2019s dismal, disgraceful failure to protect the economic interests of its member states against the US tariff war. Indeed, for Bardella, Ursula von der Leyen\u2019s recent fiasco at Trump\u2019s Turnberry Berghof amounts to \u201cdemocratic treason,\u201d a \u201cpolitical setback,\u201d and a \u201ccapitulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Wondering why the EU is so screwed? Just look at its top diplomat<\/p>\n
You will hardly hear similarly clear words about NATO. But, Atlanticists, don\u2019t bank on that silence. It does not mean there is no discontent. It simply means that the interests attached to NATO \u2013 that is what is left of the US empire in Europe \u2013 are even more sensitive than those tied to the EU. As you would expect in the de facto dual NATO-EU system, in which the EU plays second fiddle.
\nThe crisis of the Macron regime\u00a0that is afflicting the French \u2013 called in France either \u201cMacronisme\u201d or \u201cla Macronie\u201d \u2013 may look as if it is \u201cmerely\u201d about budgets, debt, pensions, public holidays, and all in all, fiscal austerity and social inequality. Yet there is an international, even geopolitical dimension. A France ready to reclaim genuine sovereignty will have to at the very least fundamentally recast its relationship with both the EU and NATO.
\nAnd if it is smart, it will also have to rediscover the real de Gaulle, a statesman hardened in patriotic rebellion and a war for all or nothing \u2013 not a pampered finance whiz kid \u2013 who knew that Europe stretches from Gibraltar to the Urals (no, not merely to Kiev) and that its western part needs Russia to balance against a ruthless and exploitative US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
France is facing a crisis not seen in almost 70 years \u2013 is it time for a Sixth Republic? The France of President Emmanuel Macron, who is really the egomaniac-in-chief,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t