Is new alliance in works, extending from French Socialists, Ecologists, Communists to centre-right?

Is new alliance in works, extending from French Socialists, Ecologists, Communists to centre-right?

We can now bring in Paul Smith, associate professor and head of French and franophhone studies at the University of Nottingham. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on the program today. Do we know what uh the president is likely to do given that it looks like this government has its days numbered now? We don’t really know. No, there are several names that are doing the rounds. There are figures within uh M’s majority. uh one or two names, Sebastian Lukonu uh and also Jia Damina has been mooted as a possible replacement. The alternative as Clovis very rightly said is to pick someone from the left uh and certainly the socialists are saying that a condition of their support would be to be for that that person to be somebody from the socialist party. There might be, and I stress the word might, there might be a candidate who is not in the currently in the party, but has a left-wing tradition sort of from the the center left. But we’re really looking at the possibility of extending what in French they call the the common sort of frame if you like the sock. That’s actually the base, the plinth as it were, the republican base and extending it again as Clovis said from the the socialists and possibly as far left as the ecologists and the communists all the way to some of Le Public. The attitude of the right-wing lect. They’ve been given a free vote. It’s really a question of how the vote looks today and then where Mackerel thinks he can go. At the heart of this current crisis, of course, that upcoming budget for next year, uh the French prime minister was seeking to shave 44 billion euros in in public of public spending. Has any political party uh in your opinion come up with an alternative for how to tackle this country’s uh ballooning deficit? Well, the socialists have actually come up with an alternative budget. They’re not going to they’re not talking about shaving 44 billion. They think that they can reduce the deficit by about 30 billion. And of course, the emphasis they’re on the left, so you would expect them to be talking about higher taxes on higher earners. That’s really, you know, the nub and the gist of the argument is really where the problem lies and why France has this big deficit. If you’re on the left, you think it’s because Macron has made too many concessions to the wealthy. And if you’re on the right, it’s because the uh welfare budget is too high. And so you’ve got this basically you’ve what you’ve got is this this big argument going on uh in the middle of French politics about exactly how uh we resolve the problem of the French deficit. But the socialists have come up with an alternative uh and they will be pressing very firmly the case uh for their alternative budget to be looked at. Now that would then cause other problems. Lupin has said and there is there is some nuance here. Lupin has said that she would in due course uh vote a motion or put down a motion of censure against anybody from the the socialist party leading the government. But there is some there is still some negotiation to be done not necessarily with her but with the other parties. The national rally as you know has been call as Clover said as well is calling for new legislative elections. Is this something that the president may consider given that Emanuel M is a lame duck currently and whatever happens he’s likely to end up a lame duck. Well, I think it’s unlikely immediately because we although you know he’s had two weeks to think about who to replace with. It really depends how the vote goes today and what the lie of the land is. I think it’s unlikely that there would be fresh elections and the national rally says it does and sometimes it says it doesn’t want uh a dissolution and that would cause its own problems. very interesting uh reading yesterday that Lupin one one of the views is that Lupin although she would be technically ineligible to stand would appeal to the constitutional council and that would kind of set up another kind of political crisis on the you know to go on at the same time if there were a dissolution. Uh and as Clovis also said and a lot of commentators made the point that really what the far right and the far left are trying to do is to force Macron to stand down and that seems very unlikely. Um but at this moment in time a dissolution does not seem to be an absolute certainty but then we didn’t think it was back in June of 2024. So you know anything could happen. Emanuel Mron tries to project uh strength on the world stage when we think of him co-chairing the coalition of the willing uh meetings for Ukraine for instance alongside Kama if his government loses this vote like it’s poised to do and he’s further weakened domestically won’t that carefully crafted image he has on the world stage take a beating? I don’t think so. I think that well yes and no. I think that it’s it’s much more subtle than that. that I mean there is a tendency to see these things in quite a a sort of carteesian quite sort of black and white. It’s important to understand that the the constitution of the fifth republic actually allows the president to stand back to appoint a prime minister who then takes responsibility for the day-to-day running as Bayu has done as Bah did and as various other presidents have done in the past. The problem is that there’s a very conflated uh way of reading the constitution of seeing prime minister and president as the same person or as being part of the same kind of identity which they’re they’re technically not. So and I think that seen from the international perspective I think that Karma and everybody else will say okay he has problems domestically but the p the president the French president still in fact almost the only thing that’s left of the French president in this situation is their standing as an international leader and I don’t think that that will be seriously undermined at this point. Uh I have to ask about Wednesday because of course there have been calls uh for uh for this country to be blocked. Block 2 is being called. Uh do you think we could potentially have another yellow vest movement uh erupting here in France? It’s it’s again it’s it’s quite nuanced, isn’t it? the the yellow vest movement was very much detached from political organizations, detached from the trade unions, detached from political parties and its origins, the the block everything movement on Wednesday kind of comes from the same place initially as the yellow vest, very much an online citizens movement, but it’s been appropriated by the left-wing parties. has been appropriated by trade unions and that’s very different in the sense that if you have trade unions or parties involved then you have uh you have interlocutors you can have you have people that the the government can talk to and that’s that’s quite traditional in the sense in a sense and that’s very different so it’s it it’ll and it’ll be interesting to see just how much uh just what the takeup is on on Wednesday we’ll see uh what happens Boltzman thank you for joining us on the program appreciate Now, we will be bringing you special coverage of that confidence motion in the National Assembly on France 24. That’s starting from 3 p.m. Paris time, uh 1 p.m. GMT.

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou was set to fall in a confidence vote in parliament on Monday after just nine months in the job, sparking fresh political uncertainty for France and piling pressure on President Emmanuel Macron. Bayrou blindsided even his allies by calling a confidence vote to end a months-long standoff over his 44 billion euro austerity budget. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective, FRANCE 24’s Delano d’Souza welcomes Paul Smith, Associate Professor in French History and Politics at the University of Nottingham.
#ConfidenceVote #FrenchPolitics #FrancoisBayrou

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