OPINION: Bayrou's budget has infuriated everyone and may force France into fresh elections
abolition of two public holidays
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This was an ambitious programme for a powerful prime minister with a large parliamentary majority and several years to impose his will before the next election.
Bayrou is the most unpopular Prime Minister for 60 years. He heads a quarrelsome coalition with a minority of seats in the National Assembly. His chances of surviving the Autumn as France's fourth prime minister in 20 months are small – and smaller after Tuesday's speech.
What was he trying to achieve? To end his 40-year career in French politics guns-blazing as the man who was right but ignored?
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Bayrou's office rejects that interpretation. They say Tuesday's speech was aimed over the heads of politicians at an 'ordinary France' which understands that a proud, independent country can no longer afford to add to its Himalaya of €3.3 trillion of public debt.
The Prime Minister believes, they say, that the predictable rejection of his plan by oppositions of both Left and Far Right was just the beginning of a long negotiation. Bayrou plans to take no summer holiday. He believes that public opinion will come to his rescue.
His maximalist plan to cut the 2026 budget by €43.8 billion can be sold in amended form, he believes, to the Socialists if not the Far Right. The abolition of Easter Monday and May 8th as public holidays was intended to concentrate minds but fall away in the final negotiation.
This is the theory. There were no clear statements of support from the parties of the minority Centre and Centre-right coalition, other than Bayrou's own Modem. This is the Prime Minister's strategy alone.
His days are probably numbered and two numbers will decide his fate.
The first number is €43.8 billion. The Prime Minister is right to say that France needs to cut a large chunk from its deficit next year. But how can he or any other Prime Minister hope to correct 50 years of profligacy with no majority in the National Assembly?
The second number is 289. How can Bayrou avoid a censure motion in the Assembly in the autumn – 289 votes out of 577 are needed – when the mutually-detesting opposition groups of Left and Far Right seem determined to bring him down?
Bayrou's predecessor Michel Barnier survived only three months before he was toppled by his attempts to pass a deficit-cutting budget for 2025. Bayrou's career as PM will almost certainly be terminated by his attempts to pass a budget for 2026.
What will President Emmanuel Macron do then? He could call a new parliamentary election but that would solve little. He is more likely, I believe, to appoint a new Prime Minister – the fifth in less than two years – to try to pick a new way through the parliamentary-budgetary morass.
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Only if that fails will Macron feel obliged to call a new legislative election late this year or in the spring (disrupting the important, municipal elections due in March).
None of the main players - whatever they may say - wants a new national election before the Presidential poll of April-May 2027.
President Macron was badly burned politically by his calamitous decision to hold a snap election last June and July. He thought he was going to be forced into an election within a couple of months anyway by the manoeuvres of the centre-right group in the National Assembly.
He recovered his power to dissolve the assembly last week after a constitution-imposed 12 months delay. He will be very reluctant to use that power again but may eventually have little choice.
The Left does not want a new election, whatever they may say. It would be difficult for them to reassemble their successful electoral alliance, the New Popular Front. They would risk losing many of the seats that they won last year.
Both Jean-Luc Mélenchon's hard left La France Insoumise and the divided Socialists would rather concentrate on the local elections of 2026 and presidential elections of 2027.
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So why risk an election by censuring Bayrou and whoever succeeds him? The hard left is addicted to censure motions and its extreme anti-Macron rhetoric. Compromise is not in their nature.
The Socialists made a temporary deal with Bayrou to allow the 2025 budget to pass in February. Bayrou believes that he can appeal to their patriotism and good sense.
The more radical wing of the party won its leadership election last month. They are not in the mood to rescue Bayrou - and face up to France's profound budgetary problems – again.
Marine Le Pen's Far Right might do well in a new election.
She does not want one all the same. She would be banned from running again for her seat in Hénin-Beaumont near Lille after her five-year suspension from electoral office for embezzling EU funds last March.
She would rather wait for the outcome of her appeal next summer. A parliamentary election before then might tilt the balance of power within the Rassemblement National towards her Number Two, Jordan Bardella.
So why would Le Pen risk an election by censuring Bayrou and whoever succeeds him? She has painted herself into a corner.
She has rejected in advance almost all workable means of cutting France's budget deficit. She wants no freeze in pensions or social spending; no tax rises; no cuts which effect the middle classes. Her parliamentary party and electoral base would be furious if she crossed these red lines.
In sum, no one wants a new parliamentary election so close to 2027. Not the politicians. Not the electors. We may sleep-walk into one all the same.
To solve a budgetary problem which is a half-century in the making needs either a courageous government with a parliamentary majority or an opposition ready to negotiate on the deficit in good faith.
France has neither.
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