'Symbolic power: What's the point of Macron, or the centre, if they give everything away?'

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00:00And let's bring in Renaud Foucault, friend of the programme, senior lecturer at economics at Lancaster University and seasoned France watcher as well.

00:06Good to see you this evening, Renaud. Interesting listening to Hélène just there and Marine Tondeli as well from the Greens,

00:12suggesting, well, it certainly won't be a new Green Prime Minister, but perhaps not Socialist Prime Minister as well.

00:18What are you reading into what's going on?

00:20Well, I must admit that I start being puzzled myself.

00:25So Macron seems to be trying the same again and again and again.

00:30So the word on the street yesterday was maybe bring back Jean-Louis Borloo,

00:34so one of the another of the very old centuries that could be somehow popular.

00:38Or there was also a discussion that Le Cornu suddenly had a burst of popularity after his big announcement on TV.

00:45So maybe people still love him.

00:47I mean, somehow the only way this makes sense is that Macron is betting on the fact that if he brings someone who doesn't do a lot or basically doesn't do anything,

00:57so accept not to use the 49 countries or not to push the responsibility of government to bring new laws

01:04and also accept to somehow postpone the pension reform and to postpone basically all the big decisions to 2027,

01:11it is, and I think it's true, it is in the interest of the left, of the Greens, of the France and Borde not to go to a new election.

01:18So they could somehow just kick the can down the road because the only possible winner would be the far right,

01:24so bar they là because Le Pen cannot run at the moment.

01:28Talk to us a bit more about that, why the only winner could be the far right.

01:31Am I right in saying that when we had the last elections, in the first round, as people tend to do, elect who they want to see,

01:38in the second round, they elect who they don't want to see.

01:41But some of the parties have been suggesting if that were to happen this time around, in parliamentary elections at least,

01:46they wouldn't necessarily do that.

01:47Yeah, and that's, I mean, I understand that feeling because somehow in the previous election,

01:54all those major parties, everyone basically except perhaps from La République,

01:58they said to the voters, eye in eye, we are the Republican France and we want to save the country from fascism, basically.

02:05And they said, please, you vote for us, we withdraw our candidates.

02:09So if we have a center-left, we call to vote for a centrist or for a right-wing and the other way around.

02:14And this worked. Voters overwhelmingly, they chose the Democratic parties against Le Pen.

02:21And then the next morning, those parties, they pretended not to know each other and they couldn't agree on anything.

02:26And they've been basically postponing the moment when they need to grow up and make a deal together.

02:32So can they come back to the voters and say, oh, let's do the same again, but this time it will be different?

02:37No. And there is no way in which there will be a left-wing majority after an election in a couple of weeks' time.

02:45There is no way that there will be a centrist majority.

02:47So either it's the same problem again or it is the far right and perhaps, you know,

02:52some kind of alliance between Les Républicains or the Conservative and the far right.

02:57That's perhaps the only kind of alliance that could happen.

03:00So, yes, if they don't want to take voters for full, they need to show them that there is something that is not the far right

03:07and that those people who don't have a majority alone can somehow make the country work.

03:11If they don't do that, they're just giving the keys of the country to Bardella.

03:15A couple of things strike me that happened this week that I would love to get your take on.

03:19One, this kind of Shakespearean et-tu-brute moments with, you know, César and Brutas.

03:24Brutas, in this case, Macron and Edouard Philippe, a former ally, former prime minister,

03:28who seemed to be saying to reporters quite clearly this week, it's time for a change.

03:33It's time for him to go and bring about snap presidential elections.

03:36What do you make of that?

03:39You need to go in the psyche of those French politicians.

03:42They have only one objective, which is to be the next president.

03:47And so Edouard Philippe, since Covid, so since he lost his job,

03:51he's been waiting very quietly as being the heir of Macron,

03:55who would replace him, but by staying a little bit outside

03:58so that he's not responsible for everything that happened.

04:01And for a long time, there were opinion polls after opinion polls

04:05that were showing that he was the one who would be in the predicted final second round

04:11between the far right and somebody else.

04:14And so that's he would have won and he would have been this next president.

04:18Now, the problem is that because of the country not working,

04:21he's been falling in the polls.

04:23They're all falling in the polls.

04:24There is at the moment kind of a jockeying for position.

04:27It might be perhaps Raphael Glucksmann, social democrat.

04:31It might even be Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

04:33So like I think the scare of all the other parties,

04:36which would have been a second round between Mélenchon and Bardella.

04:40But there is no clear path for being the heir of Macron.

04:43And so they're panicking and they say, OK, then we need to have a presidential election.

04:47This is kind of our last chance.

04:49Atal also with the head of Macron's own party goes on TV and say,

04:53oh, I have no clue what Macron is doing.

04:55So they're just kind of panicked.

04:56And I think this is largely and I've been blaming all those parties for not agreeing with each other.

05:01But it's impossible not to blame Macron today,

05:04not to blame the fact that after this election won by a Republican front from the far left to the center,

05:10the center right, it never gave the chance of a center left prime minister.

05:15As we know, it's well reported here on France 24 and all over the world,

05:19the comparatively generous benefits of social services, social care, health here in France,

05:27one of the areas that they wanted to look at and they couldn't get over the line when it came to the budget.

05:32But there are a number of controversial issues.

05:33And let me raise another one to you, which looks like there are things being considered to be unpicked right now.

05:38Let's go back to the controversial pension reform plan all those years ago, which we saw huge protests.

05:44Elizabeth Bourne, who supported them, former prime minister, saying also this week,

05:48maybe we should look again at those, perhaps until 2027.

05:52Are they looking at the moment of ways to actually just placate people, to unpick?

05:57Yes, but it's also because of this question of responsibility.

06:00So Macron has been elected president twice, and every single time he talked about that pension reform.

06:07So he had a mandate for that.

06:08It's just that he couldn't go through the first time.

06:10And the second time, he used a lot of his popularity.

06:14And one of the main reasons he's so unpopular now is that he pushed this pension reform to the end.

06:19And he had everybody, including some of les Républicains, who now claim they want to save the pension reform,

06:24they voted against at the time.

06:25And so the fact that, no, instead of giving, you know, if he was giving the keys of Matignon to the social democrats,

06:31it would be their responsibility to now deal with the deficit.

06:35But no, because he wants to keep those keys for himself, he has to give them away everything.

06:39But then what is the point of Macron if there is no reform?

06:42What is the point of the centrist if you just want to keep, like, the symbolic power,

06:46but you're willing to give away everything?

06:48So France has a massive deficit problem, and this deficit problem is pensions.

06:53It is 100% pension.

06:55All the rest is a byproduct of pensions.

06:57Healthcare is also aging.

06:59And this is the problem that Barnier and Beirut, both of them, try to touch a little bit by just saying,

07:05oh, we're going to freeze the highest pension.

07:07So, I mean, it's always the same.

07:08The highest public pension in France, they can be 4,000 euros.

07:11They can be 5,000 euros.

07:13This is not sustainable.

07:14And everybody knows that the next generation will not get that.

07:17But because it was the centre-right pushing that,

07:20it was voted against by Le Pen and by the Social Democrats.

07:24There is an avenue for the Social Democrats to sit down and do what Hollande is.

07:29François Hollande did many more reforms than Macron.

07:32He was much more successful.

07:33Very unpopular in the end, but he reformed France very widely.

07:37But he did that by sitting down a bit more with people.

07:40And Macron didn't do that.

07:42Right.

07:42So we're getting messages throughout World War Live.

07:45So we've heard from Olivier Faure, the socialist leader, saying that we heard a little bit

07:49from Hélène outside the elite, say he's not, Mr Macron, he's not ready to pick a new

07:52prime minister, he says.

07:53There's no guarantee the socialists would not vote down the next government.

07:57So already you've got an extra layer of tension.

07:59Let me ask you very briefly, if you were to put your money on the next prime minister in

08:03the next few minutes, the next few hours, take all the glory if you get it right.

08:07I'll forget it if you get it wrong.

08:08Who would you say, Renaud?

08:09Jean-Louis Bourleau, I'm afraid.

08:12I mean, Jean-Louis Bourleau, that Macron asked him to save the French suburb in the first

08:17mandate.

08:18Bourleau did an incredible work and came with a plan.

08:20And then Macron just vertically classified it and threw it in the bin.

08:24He's been humiliating Bourleau.

08:26But I think he's ready to humiliate him again, meaning that putting a front again and say,

08:30oh, you can take Matignon.

08:32And you know what?

08:32He will be in position of doing absolutely nothing.

08:35The best he could do is to just give away.

08:36So my money is on Bourleau or another dinosaur of the centrism.

08:42Great to talk to you as always.

08:43Renaud, Renaud Foucault, senior lecturer in economics, seasoned France watcher at Lancaster

08:47University.

08:48Speak to you soon.

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