00:00France has named its fifth prime minister in two years, President Emmanuel Macron tapping the current Minister of Armed Forces, Sébastien Le Corneau, to now lead the country just hours after the toppled PM François Bayrou handed in his resignation today following his ouster in a confidence vote on Monday.
00:20Bayrou's successor is unlikely to solve the turmoil and could face the very same fate.
00:26Well, let's cross over to Rome and speak to Thibault Mugarez, who is a political director at the Shared Ground Think Tank.
00:34Thank you so much for joining us on the programme, Thibault.
00:36Of course, you know, we were expecting a prime minister to come in the coming days. It's come today.
00:42We know that Sébastien Le Corneau's name was flying around.
00:45For you, do you think he's going to be able to handle what is a massive job now ahead of him?
00:50First of all, thanks for having me. And it's not a problem of the person or the competence.
00:58I mean, Mr. Le Corneau is obviously a very, very smart individual and very competent.
01:03And he politically is also politically savvy, being himself a politician.
01:08But the problem is that his nomination in nature is pretty much the same as that of François Bayrou.
01:13And what we're looking at right now is a sort of closing down, even, of the Élysée presidency.
01:22Because basically, I mean, he was chosen because he will do what the Élysée, ultimately what the Élysée, not necessarily will tell him to do,
01:31but he will do what the Élysée's agenda is.
01:34And this is a problem because we are in a national assembly, which still has the powers to fire the prime minister,
01:40a national assembly that is split three ways.
01:43And right now, if you want to have a majority, you need to have two of the three,
01:48or at least a part of one big core and a part of the other family.
01:56And right now, I do not see, unfortunately, I don't see Mr. Le Corneau.
02:00He will try. He might succeed for a while, but he will not.
02:03I really do not see him able to do that in the very long term.
02:08Maybe we'll have a budget. Maybe we won't have a budget.
02:11But it would be surprising if Mr. Le Corneau survives as prime minister more than a year.
02:16And it might be a matter of a couple of months before we find ourselves in the same situation as today.
02:24Well, Thibault, as you mentioned there, you know, Le Corneau could very much face the same fate
02:29that his predecessors have faced.
02:32This is the result that many parties in the national assembly were not calling for.
02:36They were trying to avoid having a new prime minister come along.
02:40The far-right national rally was calling for fresh elections.
02:43So was the Socialist Party.
02:45Tell us how the country will now move forward.
02:49How will those parties look to navigate this situation now?
02:55Well, first of all, let's be clear about one thing.
02:57The France Insoumise and the Assemblée Nationale were calling for early elections
03:02because that was the posture to have, right?
03:05They're not necessarily serious about that.
03:07The Assemblée Nationale obviously has potentially something to win out of this
03:12because they could replay the game of last time probably without or with a cordon sanitaire,
03:18with a Republican front that will be likely weaker and therefore they can gain more MPs.
03:24But otherwise, I mean, nobody really has – I mean, it's a period of crisis for France right now
03:29and nobody really has an interest in having new elections.
03:34Also, another thing is that everybody is looking not at the prime minister
03:38or what this year can hold or what next year can hold,
03:43but everybody is looking at 2027 and the next presidential election.
03:46So that's something that we need to take into account.
03:48And that might be the only way for the new prime minister to stay in his post for a long time.
03:57So, I mean, right now, it's really a very challenging time to be prime minister in France, basically.
04:05He definitely has a very big task ahead of him.
04:08Let's talk about Emmanuel Macron in all of this.
04:10Talk to us about what his thinking was in choosing Le Corneau.
04:16Well, he has lost an ally in François Bayrou.
04:22And his thinking is that maybe if he gets someone that he can trust,
04:27he will carry the day and he will do the right things
04:31and manage to be the go-between between Emmanuel Macron on the one hand
04:36and Parliament on the other.
04:38But I'm not sure the calculation is a good one.
04:42I mean, no offense to Mr. Le Corneau's obviously big talents as a politician
04:49and as a technician as well as Minister of the Armies.
04:53But I think this is his thinking.
04:58I think he wants to save the idea of the en même temps, right?
05:02That he can go, he can be both left and right.
05:05And the problem is that the left and the right are back now in the political debate.
05:10The political debate is once again articulating itself on the left and on the right.
05:17And the only people who seem not to have gotten the memo are sitting in the ADZ.
05:21And that's a problem.
05:22Let's look at the big stumbling block that Le Corneau could face, the budget.
05:29That is why his predecessor fell.
05:32François Bayrou wanted to carry out massive spending cuts.
05:35How do you think Sébastien Le Corneau will now look to navigate that?
05:39He will probably go back to the cuts because they're not necessary.
05:45There's just no other way.
05:47But he will probably avoid cutting the two holidays that were promised by Mr. Bayou,
05:55which was really a big rallying cry for the opposition.
05:58He will try to look at ways to save money here and there.
06:03It probably means cuts for the ministries, cuts for local government, cuts for things like foreign aid,
06:12which is a bit of a shame.
06:13But the cuts need to be found and the cuts need to be found where it's not going to be too much of a problem politically.
06:20So he's going to crunch the numbers and try to find one solution in which the budget can be passed without too much of a problem.
06:32But if you're looking for something revolutionary, it's just not going to be possible because the parliament will just not allow it,
06:40at least as long as there's not a coalition of centre plus far right or centre plus left and far left.
06:47And neither actor, nobody wants that, actually.
06:50This is also the problem.
06:51Nobody in parliament is ready to go for this coalition, basically.
06:57Well, we have to see what the next few days have to hold.
07:00It's been great to get your reaction to this piece of breaking news.
07:03Thanks so much for joining us.
07:05Thanks for having me.
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