00:00With me in the studio is our French politics editor, Mark Perelman, also our international affairs editor, Philippe Turle.
00:08I mean, just recapping there, Mark, he was talking in fairly bleak terms about the economic state of France.
00:14It's a ship that's taking on water.
00:17This is the worst state that this country has been in in 51 years, living on one loan after another.
00:25However, do you think he managed to sway any of his fellow parliamentarians to support him?
00:31No, no, I don't think so.
00:33I mean, clearly, you saw a man who already know that he's heading for the chopping block, the guillotine, because he gave a rather short speech, 40 minutes, not that long.
00:46And this is normally not the way you do it.
00:49You become prime minister, the first thing you do is you deliver a maiden speech, and then you ask for a vote of confidence.
00:56When he was appointed, he delivered a speech, a very confused speech at the time where he mixed up his pages and everything.
01:05He didn't ask for the confidence of the National Assembly because he knew he didn't have the numbers.
01:10Now, nine months later, he certainly doesn't have the numbers.
01:13His polling figures, as Philip said at the onset, are terrible, I mean, 20 percent and so on.
01:23And we saw how he was being jeered all along his speech.
01:27Whatever he was saying, no one seemed to be taking him seriously.
01:31So, yes, it was a Churchillian speech, not so much proposing solutions.
01:35Essentially, doom and gloom, education is bad, immigration is a problem, housing is not up to task.
01:44The debt, of course, his big mantra, the debt is essentially sinking the ship France, as you mentioned.
01:53And he said, yes, this is a moment of truth, one that I chose with the president.
02:00But I believe it's more important to take and face responsibility rather than do as usual, pretend things are well when they're not doing well.
02:10But certainly he's not even asking really for a vote of confidence.
02:15He knows he's condemned.
02:17He's doing this for history, as he himself says.
02:21He hopes that people will remember that he warned about the French situation, that no one listened to him, even though he was kicked out.
02:30He's hoping that maybe in the future people will remember him.
02:34But now, when it comes to politics, clearly, there is no way I see him surviving this vote, especially after that speech.
02:41Philip, let me bring you in.
02:42Do you agree with Mark's point there that Francois Beroux is doing it merely for his own political legacy?
02:48His speeches have changed in the past few days, being more pugnacious beforehand, becoming more resigned in the last few days.
02:58He's been doing non-stop interviews on television stations, radio stations in public around France, trying to sway public opinion.
03:07And what he's been trying to do over the last few days is to push voters in France to go to see their local MPs and say, look, Francois Beroux is right.
03:15We need to boot the economy to get it back on its feet.
03:19You need to vote in favour of his legislation and not against his vote of confidence.
03:24It hasn't worked, basically.
03:26No one seems to be changing their minds.
03:28And he's now face to face with the prospect of this day of action on Wednesday, where we're going to see calls from many around the country to block everything,
03:36to go as far as preventing people to go to supermarkets and setting up roadblocks,
03:42to protest against the cost of living, against the government and the way that Emmanuel Macron and Francois Beroux have handled the economy and the way they're handling the country.
03:50So you get the impression, seeing this address this afternoon, he was trying to outline the idea that France is in a bad way.
03:59He said it was a vast cathedral which needs to be rebuilt, comparing that also to a boat that was or a ship that was sinking that needs to have the hole filled in.
04:10People saying, well, don't worry about it.
04:12The ship is still upright, saying, you know, we're on a we're on a time span where this is going to get a lot worse.
04:17And then bringing in the aspect that we're putting all this debt burden on the shoulders of young people.
04:23They won't have a pension when they get old because there'll be so much money to pay back.
04:26We need to take this on hand right now or on board right now.
04:31So it was a I think in a way a speech to try to make some of the opposition feel maybe guilty about the fact they're going to vote against Francois Beroux.
04:43But as Mark was just saying, it's too late for that. He's unpopular in the opinion polls.
04:48Emmanuel Macron is vastly detested across the country by numbers of the population.
04:53They've had enough. They want to see them go.
04:55Whatever they're proposing to do, it won't make any difference.
04:58They want all this to change. And that's what the political parties, be it the far left, the far right, even in the middle, the socialist party.
05:05They all want a change of government. And in quite a few cases, they want a change of president.
05:09Mark, this is a constitutional crisis, is it not?
05:14And how does this play out, given that most are predicting he's going to fail?
05:19Well, it's clearly a political crisis.
05:21Whether it's a constitutional crisis, we'll have to see.
05:24Obviously, the Constitution still lays out what will happen in the future.
05:29That is, it goes back to the president, essentially.
05:33He is supposed to appoint a new prime minister to see if he can sail through parliament.
05:39And the waters are rather treacherous right now in parliament, as we just witnessed.
05:44Or he can.
05:46Now he's again allowed to call for a snap election.
05:50This is what the national rally and the far left are calling for.
05:55Obviously, what's not called for in the Constitution is him resigning.
06:01And this is what Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon are probably pushing for.
06:06But there's nothing in the Constitution that forces him to leave power, obviously, before the end of his mandate in 2027.
06:15So, yes, it is a political crisis.
06:17It is an economic crisis, because everything that François Bayrou says about the debt, the trillions, and how much it is costing France now, and it will cost France's youth in the future, is something that most commentators and experts agree with.
06:35The problem is that you have to really pass a budget.
06:40That's the next step.
06:42The discussions on the budget are supposed to be in full swing.
06:45And what are we doing right now?
06:48We're hearing a vote of confidence that was uncalled for.
06:53Now we're seeing all the opposition's group will talk.
06:57There'll be a vote later in the evening.
06:59And then you have to look for a prime minister as the clock is ticking for the vote on the next budget.
07:06It's supposed to happen by October.
07:08Last year, it was already an emergency, and we're heading towards a new emergency.
07:13So that really, I mean, it doesn't question the constitution, but it really questions the political situation we're in.
07:22A very weak president, a fractured parliament, and no magic wand that we can think of.
07:27Hopefully, the president will come up maybe with a prime minister, maybe outside of politics, that can build some kind of momentum and at least a minimal program to pass a budget.
07:39But there's absolutely no guarantee that it will happen now.
07:43And just to pick up on what Mark was saying, Emmanuel Macron has made it pretty clear that he has no intention of standing down early.
07:50He said he's, on several occasions, he's going to stay in office until the end of his mandate in 2027,
07:54which looks that if what we've seen today is the fall of François Beyrou, who's only been in power since January,
08:02it's going to lead to another prime minister.
08:04For how long will that prime minister last for before that government is also voted out or collapses?
08:10We could be going through this quite a lot in the next couple of years before the next presidential election comes along.
08:15And what it basically means is that on the domestic front, Emmanuel Macron will be a lame duck, which he is already.
08:21But he's going to find it absolutely impossible to push through any legislation, even get a budget voted through, which is what Mark was just talking about.
08:28So we really are in very uncharted waters right now.
08:32And coming back to that, it couldn't come at a worse time, could it?
08:35I mean, you've got Russia's war in Ukraine, the need to boost defence spending.
08:40Obviously, there's a backlog of parliamentary legislation that needs to be pushed through.
08:45Yet the whole of the political system seems to be frozen as a result of this crisis.
08:50Well, it is actually quite strange, because if you look at the way that Emmanuel Macron is perceived by the international community,
08:58he is quite respected and seen as a strong European figure.
09:03It's a disconnect, isn't it?
09:05Because he is in charge, basically, the way that the constitution is set up in France, that the president names the prime minister,
09:11the prime minister runs the government and the domestic policies.
09:15The president is in charge of the international politics, foreign affairs and the military.
09:22So this acts like a firewall to, in a way, protect the president.
09:27It hasn't done it this time round because both are vastly unpopular.
09:30But on the international scene, President Macron, I don't think, would be too badly affected by what's going on domestically,
09:36because all the other leaders in Europe, be they the British prime minister, Keir Starmer,
09:41or the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, they all go through difficulties back home.
09:47A lot of criticism about the way they're running the country.
09:50So people know about that and some don't know about that.
09:54They just see Emmanuel Macron for what he is on the international scene as someone trying hard to reach an end in the war in Ukraine
09:59and also the war in Gaza and being a vocal supporter of Europe.
10:04But it'll be interesting to see whether he can keep that momentum up for another couple of years if the situation back home in France degenerates even more than it has already,
10:14especially if there is another government that is very short lived and doesn't manage to push through legislation.
10:18Just to give you one example, if there is going to be a coalition of the willing,
10:22imagine there is a ceasefire in Ukraine and there is a decision to send troops, European troops, France has pledged them,
10:29so has the United Kingdom, into Ukraine.
10:31How will that happen if there is no agreement in the National Assembly about sending these troops?
10:35Who will make that decision?
10:36Will it be Emmanuel Macron himself?
10:39Will he have to get a vote on that?
10:40Will they agree to send it because he's unpopular?
10:42All of that can have ramifications onto the President and on his ability to be able to intervene on the international scene.
10:50Very briefly, we've just got a minute to go, Mark.
10:53I mean, Fitch Credit Rating Agency is due to come out with its revised credit rating for France this Friday.
10:59It's already at double A minus.
11:02The tip is that it's going to drop even further.
11:04That does not bode well either for this country, does it?
11:07Yes, obviously, because even though those agencies look at the figures, they also look at the atmospherics.
11:13And obviously, the instability that was unheard of in France has been now clearly on display.
11:22I mean, since 2022, you know, a number of prime ministers, they last months, not years anymore.
11:29They're not able to implement policies.
11:30And especially what counts in the eyes of those agencies, they're not able to pass a budget and a budget that holds and does not need correction or anything.
11:39So France is becoming weak politically, but also economically.
11:43And that's obviously going to weigh more on the interest rates and therefore the debt and so on.
11:49This whole mechanism that François Bayrou was talking, the problem is that he was talking to himself and not to the French.
11:56And that's been his problem for the past nine months.
