The only difference is that Bayrou is refusing to go through the same agony of three months of ultimately fruitless debate in parliament. Like a desperate gambler, he is staking the house on an initial vote of confidence.<\/p>\n
If he wins, it will be a spectacular vindication of his apocalyptic strategy, warning \u2013 like a lone prophetic voice \u2013 of the existential threat to France if it fails to take back control of its debt.<\/p>\n
The trouble is no-one expects him to win the vote. Least of all, probably, he himself.<\/p>\n
The numbers are easy to count. <\/p>\n
The four pro-government groups in the Assembly have 210 deputies between them. The oppositions \u2013 of left and right \u2013 have between them 353.<\/p>\n
For Bayrou to have any chance, he would need either the Socialist bloc (66 seats) or Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (123) to make a move. If National Rally abstained, it would make for a tight vote that might just be winnable if a few smaller groups did the same.<\/p>\n
But if Bayrou is looking to the Socialists, they would have to vote for the government to make any difference. And that is not going to happen.<\/p>\n
Indeed the whole question is looking increasingly academic as opposition leader after opposition leader has made it clear in the last 24 hours that they are not in any way minded to rescue the beleaguered PM.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Bayrou has his eye rather on the country as a whole. <\/p>\n
Maybe he wants to go down in history as the man who, Cassandra-like, foretold France’s death-by-debt but was never believed. Or perhaps he is pondering the 2027 presidential election, and hopes that by then voters will realise he was right all along.<\/p>\n
Sadly for him, though, there is no sign of the French changing their mind on debt. In their vast majority, they simply do not think the issue is as urgent as Bayrou says it is. Or if they do, they can’t see why ordinary folks like them should suffer for it.<\/p>\n
Even before this latest twist, the country was shaping up for a dramatic autumn \u2013 with a grassroots protest movement called Bloquons Tout (Let’s Block Everything) earning comparisons with the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) who so disrupted Macron’s first mandate as president.<\/p>\n
Fired up by Bayrou’s plans to axe two public holidays and freeze public spending, the movement announced a day of action on 10 September, for which it now has the support of far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon. Unions are planning separate actions against government “austerity”.<\/p>\n
Of course if the government has fallen on 8 September, then the need for such protest may have evaporated. And the country will have other, more pressing, problems on its mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The only difference is that Bayrou is refusing to go through the same agony of three months of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-376604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115098609456853891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}