After French prime minister François Bayrou called a confidence vote that he seems certain to lose, John Lichfield asks what happens next for France, and whether Bayrou’s fall will make the French accept that financial sacrifices are needed.
One of the first rules of politics is that you don’t call a vote that you know you are likely to lose.
François Bayrou did that on Monday. Worse, he made his survival even less likely by choosing a kind of vote that was almost impossible for him to win.
By calling a vote of confidence in his own government on September 8th, Bayrou was in effect committing political hara-kiri. He was making a ritual sacrifice in the hope of shocking the French people and the French political classes into grasping the fine fiscal mess that the country has created with a half century of unbalanced budgets.
“We face an immediate danger, which we must tackle, otherwise we have no future,” the Prime Minister said. “There are moments when only a calculated risk can allow you to escape a more serious risk. It is a matter of the survival of our state and the image of our nation.”
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Bayrou believes himself to be a different kind of politician, less power-obsessed than most, closer to public opinion, capable of steering a practical course between the rocks of competing ideologies of left and right.
He also believes in the fundamental common sense of the French people. His nine months in power have been disappointing, even to himself.
Bayrou has been accused of trying to muddle through like all his predecessors. He has been accused of laziness and duplicity. He has been accused of trying to cling on to power.
He has tried to appeal directly to the good sense of the electorate, including in a series of You Tube videos this summer which set out the case for short-term budgetary pain.
No one much noticed. Instead, the country worked itself up into a froth over his planned €43.8 billion in cuts and new taxes in next year’s budget. Especial fury was reserved, as he knew it would be, for his proposal to abolish two out of the eleven French bank holidays.
READ ALSO: 84 percent of French oppose scrapping public holidays to save money✎
Rather than heed Bayrou’s appeals for modest sacrifice (he took no holiday in August to set an example), France plotted rebellion. A series of strikes are threatened next month. A shadowy movement on the internet is threatening to close down the country on September 10th. Whenever you hear the word “movement” in France, you know things are likely to stop.
READ ALSO: What do we know about the call to ‘blockade France’ on September 10th?✎
So Bayrou decided to mount a one-man rebellion of his own.
He was expected on Monday to offer a series of concessions on his 2026 outline budget to try to save his strategy and his job. Instead, he asked President Emmanuel Macron to call a special session of parliament on September 8th to discuss a vote of confidence in his own minority Centre and Centre-right government. With only 210 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, it is almost impossible for Bayrou to survive such a vote.
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He was already facing the prospect of a series of opposition censure motions this Autumn. The rules for “confidence” votes and “censure” votes are different. To censure and topple a government, the opposition needs an absolute majority of 289 out of the 577 members of the Assembly. To win a confidence vote, the opposition needs a simple majority of those voting on the day – a much easier task
Bayrou chose this difficult route to try to wrong-foot the opposition but mostly to make a point of principle. He was not prepared to go through months of guerrilla warfare in parliament and on the streets. He was not ready to twist and turn to save his own political skin. He wanted a single clear confrontation on the question: “is the country ready to accept modest sacrifice now to avoid a debilitating fiscal crisis in the near future?”
Probably, Bayrou knew that he was doomed anyway. He chose the more noble and heroic route in an attempt to rescue his reputation, and self-image, as a man of practical common sense rather than a selfish politician who puts power-before-everything.
Bayrou also evidently hopes that his decision to walk into the gunfire, rather than cower in the trenches of the Matignon Palace, will provoke a reversal of public opinion. Seeing his sacrifice – and perhaps seeing also the hammering of France on bond and stock markets – voters will accept, finally, that tough decisions and sacrifices are needed.
Good luck with that, Monsieur Bayrou.
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More likely in my opinion is a year of déjà vu. President Macron will NOT call a new parliamentary election. He will appoint a new prime minister (his fifth in two years). It will probably be the defence minister, Sébastien Lecornu.
The new PM will propose a 2026 budget less painful than the Bayrou version. The Socialists will demand further concessions and then agree to allow the budget pass (as they did with Bayrou’s 2025 budget).
In other words, there will be no heroic change of course; there will be more muddle through. All difficult decisions will be postponed until the 2027 presidential election.
Who will then campaign, Bayrou-like, for France to work harder and spend less?
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