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00:00Welcome back to The World Today here on France 24. I'm Stuart Norval. The headlines for you.
00:06France's Prime Minister Francois Beirut set to enter the Elysee Palace. We think around midday
00:11Paris time to formally hand in his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron. That after his huge
00:17defeat in a confidence motion yesterday. Now Macron faced with the task of trying to find
00:22France's fifth Prime Minister of Macron's second term in office. We can analyse that for you in
00:28the next 15 minutes. I'm going to talk to our political expert Andrew Smith as part of the
00:32perspective in just a moment. So it could be someone from his inner circle, a current minister
00:44perhaps. It could be someone aligned more to the left to try to persuade left-leaning lawmakers to
00:50give their support. Or it could even be that Macron tries his hand at a cohabitation where he would
00:55work directly with a Prime Minister from an opposing party. Whichever route he goes down
01:01though, the French Prime Minister desperately needs to be someone who will stick and not
01:06just face the same fate as Francois Beirut and Michel Barnier. Before him, Macron is set to make
01:11the decision in the coming days. After, of course, Beirut lost that confidence vote yesterday.
01:19Well, let's start off with some reaction for you.
01:21If he loves this country, if he cares about the interests of the French, if he doesn't
01:27leave the far right as the only alternative, then, as I said, he should come and find us.
01:34This moment marks the end of the agony of a phantom government. The president has only
01:41one option. Call new elections and let the country choose.
01:46Well, joining me now is historian of modern France at Queen Mary University of London, Andrew Smith.
01:51Good to have you with us, as ever, Andrew, here on France 24. I mean, once again, France is in a bit
01:57of a mess, isn't it? I mean, is that fair?
02:01I think it's very much fair. This is a real crisis, I think, and a crisis of the Fifth Republic. We
02:07haven't seen this level of instability in the Fifth Republic. Gone are the days where we saw,
02:12you know, a real element of stability, an idea machine for creating these majorities behind a
02:18strong president. This looks very much like the France of the Fourth Republic, or even the Third
02:23Republic. I think that's the big worry. Famously, of course, François Bayrou spoke about Pierre
02:28Mendes France, this idea of a, you know, a Fourth Republic prime minister, a kind of short term,
02:34but one that fixed a lot of problems and all the rest of it. Maurice Larkin, a historian famously
02:39called Pierre Mendes France, Janus-like. But he also referred to the idea of his Cassandra-like
02:44qualities. And I think that's probably what we'll remember François Bayrou for, this
02:48Cassandra-like warning of over-indebtedness, of, you know, danger to come, of all these
02:54difficulties. But nonetheless, he met the same fate. He's outlived Pierre Mendes France by
02:59about 30 days in office, but nonetheless also fallen to a confidence vote. So in reality,
03:06what we keep seeing are these echoes of Republic's past, an idea that really there needs to be
03:11something different to reflect this new, changed reality. A France divided roughly into thirds,
03:18which are mutually exclusive and find it very difficult to work with each other.
03:22In a sense, yesterday, Bayrou's, you know, I mentioned he was Cassandra-like there. His fall
03:26was like some sort of Greek tragedy. We watched him take the stage. We watched him make this
03:31desperate plea only to be sort of denounced by all of his political rivals before finally,
03:37meekly, accepting the fact that his time was over. And so it really is a bit tragic. But
03:43actually, the worst thing about it is it seems like that tragedy is going to repeat itself again.
03:48Yeah, Andrew, we're going to have a little bit of a listen now to some of the reaction this
03:52morning from some of the politicians talking on French television and radio. First of all,
03:56this is the socialist leader, Olivier Faure.
03:58I believe we need to see clearly that we are in a divided country that is fed up. It's time for a
04:09divided government. Today, we want change. We want to ensure that French people who will be protesting
04:16in the streets expressing their exasperation can finally find a political outlook through change
04:22that, in my opinion, cannot be a continuation of what we've known for eight years.
04:31Olivier Faure there, who's hoping he might be named the next prime minister to try and bring
04:36the left on board. We can also hear as well, Andrew, from Jordan Bardella from the National Rally.
04:42The question is, are we moving away from Macronism or not? Since 2017, Emmanuel Macron has been saying,
04:49you don't change a losing team. Today, if a new government wants to have a chance of achieving
04:53concrete measures for the country and a return to stability, it must finally break with Macronism.
04:59Who's in charge is irrelevant? It's the underlying policy that must change.
05:03Now, there's Jordan Bardella there from the National Rally. I mean, listening to both of them, Andrew,
05:06it's obvious, isn't it, that all the different parties have different solutions to this now,
05:10don't they? Yeah, absolutely. Most of the solutions involve them getting a shot is really what we could
05:19diagnose from that. I think that's one of the big problems. In a sense, when you've got this tripartite
05:24division, when you've got this idea of a country where people disagree politically, in one sense,
05:29in the Fifth Republic, you have the perfect machine to solve that, a parliamentary democracy. You have people
05:34that should be able to work together. And I think that's one of the big difficulties you've seen there
05:39with the far right, of course, are very, very keen for this idea of another dissolution of the
05:44government, a return to legislative elections. But I think one of the things that's really key here is
05:50it's not really down again to, you know, the French people to solve the problems of parliament. I think
05:56one of the things we need to keep coming back to is it's down to parliament to solve the problems of
06:00the French people. And one of the big difficulties right now is the inability of parliamentarians to
06:06work beyond their kind of narrow party boundaries, the narrow party interests. And that really is the
06:15big difficulty. And it's also what makes it so impossible to see how we actually find a route
06:19out of this. You mentioned different candidates. Of course, we know that Emmanuel Macron has traditionally
06:24tried to govern really from the centre right. You can look at even by room backwards. We've got this
06:30idea of, you know, we've seen how that works. We've seen the idea of trying to govern with a centrist
06:35majority and taking a little bit of the Republicans on the centre right with them. We've reached a
06:40situation where that's no longer going to work. Why? Really because the far right have essentially
06:45removed their sort of soft guarantee, as it were, are much more on a war footing because of the,
06:52you know, increasing pace with which we reach new parliamentary tests, the municipal elections
06:59in March next year, of course, followed by the presidential elections in 2027. Now, this is
07:04this is quite important, I think, because what it means is that route on the right is essentially blocked
07:09in many ways. And you can see Marine Le Pen there in her funny jacket, a wolf in sheep's clothing,
07:15trying to call for this new dissolution. But actually, the only reason for that is because of the surging
07:20anger in the country. And so the the national rally feel they can capitalize on that anger
07:26in order to seize to seize the prime ministerial seat. So there's something that the one thing he
07:31hasn't tried before, and this is the big imponderable, is looking to the left. And of course, you mentioned
07:37Olivier Faure, you mentioned the idea that he's interested in terms of the Socialist Party leading.
07:41They've got a big problem as well, because the Socialist Party want to lead, but they cannot be seen
07:46to be stooges to a brand of macronism, which, you know, is kind of so unpopular now that you
07:52couldn't win a vote for it. And essentially, on the left, they have to be seen in the Socialist Party
07:58to go in. If they want to be prime ministerial candidates, they want to try and construct a
08:02government. They need to try and govern with a left wing agenda. Why? Because otherwise,
08:07France Insoumise, the France Unbow, the far left Mélenchon's party will eat them alive at the next
08:12electoral test. And so this is the big challenge. Soft right and soft left are terrified of the
08:18margins. And meanwhile, the centre has crumbled to the extent that it's not really possible to find
08:23that same amount of governance there. And that leaves us with this same imponderable,
08:28how to govern this ungovernable parliament. Andrew, there's something else on the horizon,
08:32isn't there? Not only have we got to have a new prime minister named, we've also got this huge day
08:38of action, which is planned tomorrow here in France. I mean, tell us about that and how that
08:43could affect this process. Yeah, of course, we've got the block everything,
08:48block on two movement scheduled for the 10th of September. It was something which emerged through
08:53sort of shadowy online channels, telegram networks and all kinds of things. You saw initially it was,
09:01you know, conspiratorial circles and all the rest. And it spread much broader and gained much more
09:05traction across Facebook and TikTok and actually then spread into, I guess, more mainstream political
09:10opinion as well. It looked at first a little bit like the yellow vests, a sort of completely apolitical
09:16movement, one which, you know, set out to communicate like broad popular anger with purchasing power,
09:23with political immobility, with these types of issues. And one of the things that's happened,
09:27which has changed it slightly, is the far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's party, France Unbowed,
09:32have jumped on it in a really strong way. And they've been very, very keen to support it and
09:37essentially to take ownership of it. And that's transformed it slightly such that it seems to be
09:42taking on more of a far left character. Now, at first, because of that kind of unusual origin,
09:47we had a lot of people in the trade unions, for example, people who would support that normal
09:51mobilisation in the street and those types of mayday protests and that type of thing,
09:56were a little bit cautious because they weren't sure what the demands were and who was looking to
10:00support it. We've seen some unions get on board. Of course, there's a big inter-sandicala,
10:05kind of cross-union protest on the 18th that's scheduled. But really, I think what we're likely
10:09to see are people trying to, first of all, kind of maybe blockade roundabouts, blockade shops.
10:16We've seen the idea of people staying home, not spending. We've also seen on the government side,
10:21the interior minister, Bruno Retallot, warning people that, you know, they will not tolerate the
10:26idea of blockading or stopping critical national infrastructure, like the blockading of refineries
10:33way back in the day, in the 2000s. And so there really is something, it's unsure how many people
10:38will turn out. It's been a big splash. But because of that, we know online manipulation is very possible.
10:44So it's quite an uncertain thing. It's not got one agenda. It's not got one leader.
10:49And so we've got an amorphous, big expression of public anger. We've got a date, we've got a time,
10:54but we don't yet have an agenda to see what's going to happen on the 10th.
10:59Andrew, I've got one more question for you. But first of all, let's just bring you one report in
11:03the meantime, because the collapse of the government, of course, means that many legislative projects that
11:08were underway will now grind to a halt. In addition to the big question of how to balance the budget,
11:13the items now on hold are numerous. Monty Francis has more.
11:18From the energy industry, to public broadcasting, to legislation on euthanasia and criminal justice,
11:25the collapse of the government means delay or worse for a slew of bills that were under
11:29consideration by French lawmakers. Already passed by the Senate in July, a bill laying out the country's
11:36energy policy through 2030 is now in limbo. The bill allocated how much of France's energy would
11:42come from nuclear and renewable sources and was seen as part of the country's goal to reach carbon
11:47neutrality by 2050. Also on hold, a controversial proposed reform of public broadcasting being
11:54pushed by Culture Minister Rashida Dati. The bill was due to return to the Assembly this fall and many
12:00expected it would pass, creating a holding company to oversee and possibly make cuts to Radio France,
12:06France Television and the National Audiovisual Institute. The bill could now be postponed indefinitely.
12:14Already delayed once by the government's collapse in June of last year, this May, the National Assembly
12:19adopted a bill allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives and a second bill that expands
12:25palliative care. But with the government's collapse, it's unclear when a final vote on either of the bills
12:30could happen. Criminal justice reform championed by the justice minister is also now on the back burner.
12:37The proposed reforms included changes to sentencing guidelines intended to give judges more leeway in
12:43handing out punishments. Economic reforms in France have also been tabled, including a bill to fight
12:49social security and tax fraud, which the former prime minister had hoped would save more than two
12:55billion euros in next year's budget. The government's collapse is also reverberating on the other
13:00side of the globe in the French overseas semi-autonomous territory of New Caledonia, which was granted a
13:06new status just two months ago, enabling citizens to have dual nationality with France. There's been
13:13political upheaval over when to hold local elections, and the government collapse on the mainland could
13:18complicate discussions there and ultimately delay those contests.
13:22So all that on hold, a fifth prime minister to be named in just over two and a half years. Andrew,
13:30you've just got one minute to answer this last question. Amid all of this, is there a risk to Emmanuel
13:35Macron himself?
13:38I think in Emmanuel Macron's first term, he was the hyper-president. Essentially, he was his own prime
13:45minister. He used people as a shield, but nonetheless, he was the one responsible for these legislative
13:50things, these legislative campaigns, these energy and these ideas. But in his second term, he's pulled
13:55back since 2022. We've seen this idea of much more reliance on the prime minister. And actually,
14:01what that's done is, while he's been busy attending to a lot of foreign affairs, he's seen him very
14:06active internationally, he's left that domestic scene wide open. And I think that does leave him
14:12under threat, because right now, you've seen it referred to in Italian newspapers earlier on,
14:16he seems like a lamed-up president, a zombie president. What's going to happen? Governments need
14:21to govern. They're not there simply to mind the tale. There needs to be movement in France,
14:26and this is what it calls for real invention. So Emmanuel Macron will need to appoint a prime minister
14:30in the next couple of days, and needs to be imaginative, reach out beyond the boundaries
14:34that he's already explored, and find new solutions to what are essentially new problems for his second
14:41term. Great to have you with us as ever. Thanks very much once again, Andrew. Andrew Smith there,
14:46the historian of modern France at Queen Mary University joining us there from London.
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