France no-confidence vote: Le Pen urges Macron to call snap legislative polls

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00:00This moment marks the end of the agony of a phantom government.

00:05The president has only one option, call new elections and let the country choose.

00:11And if he decides not to choose a majority, if he gets involved in the campaign,

00:16if he steps out of his role as an arbitrator to become a player,

00:20he accepts in advance the political consequences in the event of his defeat.

00:24And for more, we're joined by France 24 Politics editor Mark Perlman.

00:31You heard Marine Le Pen there saying the president has only one option.

00:34Of course, he doesn't have only one option.

00:37Dissolving parliament is a bit of a nuclear option,

00:43but he can also just name another prime minister or keep the same one.

00:48No, he won't keep the same one.

00:50François Bayrou is gone.

00:52I mean, unless there's a miracle at the National Assembly,

00:54we're already hearing he will hand in his resignation.

00:58Because as Clovis said, that was kind of a farewell speech.

01:00No, there was, yeah.

01:01I mean, he sounded like he already knew he was going to get the guillotine in a few minutes.

01:09So clearly, no, and he will resign.

01:11There's no question about this.

01:14Then what comes next?

01:14Yes, the president gets to the side.

01:17He is probably going to reappoint a new prime minister,

01:22hoping he will fare better.

01:23But the record is not a very good one, to say the least.

01:27François Bayrou, nine months.

01:29Michel Barnier, a few months.

01:31Elizabeth Borne.

01:34And so clearly, there's been a problem since his re-election in 2022.

01:40And he made the problem worse by using this nuclear weapon,

01:44that is, calling for a snap election, surprising everyone last year.

01:50And this made things even worse, because at least before that,

01:53he had a relative majority.

01:55Now he doesn't have a majority.

01:57And that is obvious today.

01:59And the problem is the polls are showing that if there was to be a snap parliamentary election,

02:05his majority, or it wouldn't be a majority at all, it would fare around 15, 1-5%.

02:11So this would be even worse.

02:14And in the worst-case scenario, the national rally could garner a majority.

02:18And so Emmanuel Macron would go down in history as the president,

02:22who handed the reins of power to the national rally,

02:25something he promised he would never do when he faced Marine Le Pen in the presidential election.

02:31So it's very, very difficult to see him calling for an election.

02:35Yes, Marine Le Pen is pushing for this, because she's reading the same polls,

02:39and she's hoping that this will force Emmanuel Macron into a corner.

02:45What she doesn't do, and she is distinguishing herself from the far left,

02:49is calling for him to resign.

02:51Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is not an MP, but who was sitting in the front row in the public today,

02:58wants Emmanuel Macron to leave.

03:01He said he is the source of all our trouble, so let's not talk about a new prime minister.

03:07A snap election is not enough.

03:08The president has to resign.

03:10We need to go for a new presidential election.

03:12Emmanuel Macron has made it clear there's no question for him.

03:17He will not resign before the end of his mandate,

03:20and no other groups, including the national rally, are calling for him to do so.

03:24So, obviously, he will have to react.

03:27We're being told, but we've been told this before,

03:30that Emmanuel Macron will not wait to appoint a new prime minister,

03:34but every time we've been told he will do so quickly,

03:37he took his time, hesitated, appointed one person in the morning

03:41before changing his mind in the evening.

03:44That's the way he functions, but clearly now there's a lot of pressure,

03:47political pressure, European pressure, financial pressure.

03:53Fitch is supposed to render its verdict on the French economy,

03:57and obviously all this unusual instability in French politics

04:01is adding more pressure on the French president

04:04to act quickly and decisively.

04:07The big question is, can he find a magic prime minister,

04:10someone who can survive longer than all the ones he's tried?

04:14Difficult.

04:15All right, and let me ask you, Mark,

04:18because just a postscriptum on François Bayrou,

04:25will he have succeeded, as our guest Renaud Foucard just said,

04:31in at least making it a conversation,

04:34how to reach a compromise on a budget?

04:36No, because he couldn't.

04:37I mean, you know, the socialists accused him today of, you know,

04:42of not sacrificing himself by telling the truth about France's woos

04:48and especially the debt that's killing any prospect for now

04:53and the future generation.

04:55The problem is that François Bayrou was supposed to pass a budget,

04:57and essentially when he decided on his own with the agreement of the president

05:04to call for this confidence vote, that is a way of not going to a budget vote

05:10that could have been mortal for him as well.

05:13So, no, there's no way of saying that he was able to build a budget.

05:18The only thing, and that probably he's hoping people will remember,

05:22that he has been talking morning, lunch, evening,

05:27and every time of the day about the debt, the debt, the debt,

05:31and how much of a threat it is.

05:33The problem is that he was not hurt by a lot of people.

05:37Even the French are not giving him credit for this.

05:40He's pulling around 20%,

05:41and this is probably also why he will be ousted.

05:47We saw him speak, not a very, you know, rousing speech,

05:52a lot of doom and gloom, Churchillian speech,

05:55but he's not Winston Churchill, obviously.

05:58He's been jeered all along his speech,

06:00so it's not a very encouraging ending for François Bayrou

06:06and also not a very good omen for his or her successor.

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