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Emmanuel Macron,RNGDPRNRNRNYour browser does not support the element. France’s president, had barely landed from Saudi Arabia when he lost another prime minister, his third this year. In a no-confidence vote on December 4th, an unholy alliance of the left and Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally () , a conservative with whom Mr Macron has shared power since September, by a total of 331 deputies, 43 more than was needed. The vote followed Mr Barnier’s use of a special provision to force his budget through parliament. It marks the first time deputies have toppled a government since 1962. With Mr Barnier, the budget falls too, plunging France into yet more political instability. Mr Macron’s great centrist project is unravelling fast.At the head of a minority coalition, Mr Barnier failed despite his best efforts to secure broader support. He had drawn up €60bn ($63bn) of tax increases and budget cuts, designed to shrink the deficit from 6.1% of this year to 5% next. In a final effort Mr Barnier ceded ground to the and its friends, who hold 140 seats in the 577-seat lower house. To no avail. “The country is going through a profound crisis,” lamented Mr Barnier before the vote.Mr Macron seems to want to appoint a successor swiftly. A new team, or the old one, could use special measures to roll over this year’s budget provisions, without inflation adjustments, into 2025. Various veteran centrists or conservatives could be stop-gap options. Some centrists are pushing the president to name a figure from the moderate left, in an attempt to split the left-wing alliance. Whoever takes over, however, the underlying problem remains: a deadlocked lower house split into three blocs and a chronic inability to forge cross-party compromise. Fresh legislative elections cannot be called until next July.It is all a long way from the great hope the Macronist centre once represented. When Americans first put Donald Trump in the White House, Mr Macron was transforming soggy centrism into a powerful pro-European post-partisan platform. Twice he kept Ms Le Pen from the presidency. Borrowing ideas from left and right, Mr Macron built the centre into a force for consensus and stable government.Thread by thread, this achievement is unravelling. In 2022 Mr Macron lost his parliamentary majority. In July, at the snap election he rashly called, it shrivelled further. The shrinking centre represents both a political threat for France and Europe, and a personal drama for Mr Macron. The constitution bars him from standing for a third consecutive term in 2027. The courts may yet ban Ms Le Pen from standing for public office for five years, in a case over the misuse of public funds to be judged in March. If not, though, she is the candidate French voters told one pollster they most want as their next president. On re-election in 2022, says an aide, Mr Macron told his team: “We’ve got to get to work, because I don’t want to hand the keys to Marine Le Pen.” If the centre cannot sort itself out, his greatest worry could be his legacy.The unravelling, or of Mr Macron’s power at home has been abrupt. The president still runs defence and foreign affairs. But under Mr Barnier domestic policymaking swung firmly to the prime minister. Shared advisers were scrapped. Several presidential aides quit. Mr Barnier’s team was relieved to find that the president “interfered less than we expected”. For Mr Macron, whose appetite for detail extends to texting ministers at all hours, it was “an enormous change”, says an aide. “Do you have any idea how he felt having no say on the budget? It was a nightmare,” says a former minister.Power-sharing has had two other consequences. First, it reinforced Mr Macron’s isolation. Defenders of his decision to dissolve parliament became scarce; would-be successors, ever more outspoken. Edouard Philippe, who served as his first prime minister, accused the president of “killing” his previous parliamentary bloc. Gabriel Attal, an ex-prime minister, has taken over Renaissance, the party his mentor founded. In November Mr Macron’s popularity sank to 23%. “Let’s just say he’s not living his best moment,” says a centrist friend.Second, it rearmed parliament, creating a “triangular power relationship”, notes Roland Lescure, a centrist deputy and ex-minister. The prime minister’s ousting is the starkest evidence yet of parliament’s new clout, and Ms Le Pen the greatest beneficiary, although she may hesitate before trying it again. The leader is treading a fine line between a desire to acquire respectability and a need to flex her muscles to please her base. “She doesn’t want to be the architect of chaos,” says an deputy.All this has spread a sense of dismay among Macronist centrists. Rival figures are nonetheless trying to work out how to protect the endangered centre, keep Ms Le Pen from office—and promote their own careers. At the very least, the centre needs to do three things: rally around a single post-Macron candidate, renew its stock of ideas, and find a way to speak to voters turned off by what they see as the arrogance of . If it can’t do this, comments one long-standing member of the tribe, “the centre could die.”On the first task, there is no shortage of aspirants. Besides Mr Philippe, the 35-year-old Mr Attal and Bruno Le Maire, a former finance minister, may fancy their chances. Broadening out, half a dozen other hopefuls lurk among moderate Socialists and centre-right Republicans. If the centre does not watch out, overcrowding could hand a run-off place instead to the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon.In shorter supply are ideas. Mr Macron’s central insight was that on big issues—Europe, climate change, technology—moderates from left and right are closer to each other than to their sides’ extremes. A post-partisan movement, he argued, could forge a different majority and “unblock” France. Once in office, however, Mr Macron bequeathed less a party than a “residual fan club”, says an insider. Now in charge, Mr Attal “understands that he needs to build an army, not just operate a small commando”, says a fellow deputy. But he inherits few activists or members. The party neither produces serious policy papers nor organises many conferences or debates. It is not too late to “renew its software”, argues Clément Beaune, a former minister and senior party figure. But individual ambitions and structural weakness will make collective work difficult.Mr Trump’s re-election underlines a third condition: the need to understand and respect those who vote for populists. The complex policy trade-offs that shape centrist politics do not lend themselves to simple messages. Nor, as Mr Macron has learned, is it enough to create more jobs, lure investors or keep inflation low if people do not feel you are fighting for them.Post-partisan centrism may survive. “It remains 100% pertinent,” argues Mr Le Maire: “The left-right divide is totally inefficient in dealing with the big challenges of our day.” Or it could turn out to be a parenthesis, replaced by the party system it overthrew, or far worse. This week’s drama is a sobering reminder of the centre’s fragility and its eroding capacity to bring about the stability that France needs.
