Macron faces…La Fin! Furious Emmanuel ‘rants in disbelief at aides’ after his PM is ousted, leaving France ‘on the point of abyss’ with a ‘catastrophic financial disaster’ amid requires president to stop

France has been left ‘on the brink of the abyss’ staring down an economic crisis and continued political floundering after far-right and leftist lawmakers voted to topple the government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier yesterday.

The sensational no-confidence motion means Barnier – the former Brexit negotiator for the EU – will become the shortest-serving prime minister in modern French history when he hands in his resignation this week.

He was ousted by lawmakers from Marine Le Pen‘s hard-right National Rally party and members of France’s leftist coalition, who came together in an unholy alliance to pass a vote of no-confidence with 331 out of 574 votes – well over the 288 needed.

The vote prompted French President Emmanuel Macron, who has faced widespread calls to resign amid the chaos, to hold an emergency meeting with his inner circle in which he reportedly lambasted the left coalition for pushing Barnier out.

Macron railed against the Socialist Party (PS) in particular for ‘inventing an anti-Republican front’, castigating the left as ‘a coalition of the irresponsible that will have to assume responsibility for this before the French people’.

Barnier was ousted after trying to achieve the impossible – to put together a budget to address the spiralling national debt while also keeping all three quarrelling political blocs in France’s hung Parliament happy at the same time.

Having failed to make headway in the National Assembly, Barnier used an article of the French Constitution to force through a social security financing bill as part of a budget proposing 60 billion euro-tax hikes and spending cuts – a move that led the hard right and left to rise up against him.

Both sides spouted rhetoric that Barnier’s proposed budget would damage and harm the French people – even while the deficit soars unchecked.

His ousting was summed up by veteran French journalist Eric Brunet who told BFMTV: ‘What we have just seen is jaw-droppingly French.

‘No pragmatism. Just ideology. Our whole discourse is disconnected from reality. It is typically, singularly French.’

Yesterday’s governmental collapse leaves France in a unenviable position.

The no-confidence vote plunged the nation into a period of political paralysis with many predicting that economic disaster would follow. 

French bonds and stocks are already being sold off at an alarming rate and borrowing costs are spiralling, all while public sector workers prepare for mass strikes.

The country’s deficit already stands at over six per cent of GDP and is twice as much as the limit imposed by the European Union, of which France is a leading member.

France now risks ending the year without a 2025 budget, although the constitution allows special measures that would avert a US-style government shutdown and would see the 2024 budget roll over into next year until an alternative is drawn up.

Macron is now under pressure to name a new Prime Minister in a matter of days, with US president-elect Donald Trump expected to visit Paris this weekend for the reopening of the historic Notre Dame cathedral following years of renovations.

Loyalist Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu and Macron’s centrist ally Francois Bayrou are seen as possible contenders.

Macron could well ask Barnier to stay on in a caretaker role as he seeks a replacement.

But any Prime Minister will have their work cut out to tame France’s divided parliament.

Nicolas Beytout, political analyst at France’s L’Opinion newspaper, predicts that Barnier’s replacement will inevitably face the same obstacles and will likely fail just as their predecessor did.

‘A new government needs time, which it won’t have. It needs a majority, which it won’t have. And it needs the determination to see through the necessary reduction in state spending – which it won’t have.

‘So I expect to see several more motions of censure, and several more falls of government – before eventually we start to wake up,’ he concluded bleakly.

Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe added: ‘Let’s be clear, we are on the brink of the abyss’, warning that the toppling of the government ‘reinforces political disorder and weakens our country.’

The sorry state of affairs has led to mass appeals from lawmakers for Macron to resign.

Macron has a mandate until 2027 and cannot be pushed out, but the political debacle has left him a diminished figure.

France’s governmental woes are, after all, largely due to the French President’s decision to call a snap election over the summer.

French voters duly installed a parliament split roughly equally between three blocs – a leftist coalition, Macron’s centrists and allies, and the hard-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen.

The hung Parliament has proved largely useless with each bloc bickering and challenging the others while failing to deliver constructive policy decisions.

Typically, this situation would be remedied by a return to the ballot box.

But Article 12 of France’s Constitution prohibits ‘a new dissolution of the National Assembly within one year’ of the previous election – meaning that Parliament will continue as is until at least July 2024.

Following Barnier’s ousting, several lawmakers declared that the only way to move forward was for Macron to ‘reset’ the political climate by stepping down.

Manuel Bompard, an MP for the leftist La France Insoumise (LFI) party, said: ‘We will see in the next few hours how Emmanuel Macron intends to go about it… but we are facing an unstable situation.

‘If we want to bring back a situation of stability, it requires the departure of the President of the Republic.’

Bompard also said that his party would immediately put forward another vote of no-confidence against Barnier’s replacement should Macron choose to appoint a loyalist member of his own party.

‘If the idea is to have as future Prime Minister a Macronist who lost the European elections and the legislative elections, why not censure him?’

‘When we vote, there must be consequences,’ he insisted to French station RTL.

‘It would be absurd, after the fall of the Barnier government, to appoint a member of the political force that came in third place.’

Another LFI member Éric Coquerel said: ‘This government has never had any legitimacy and the responsibility for it lies more with Mr. Macron than Mr. Barnier.’ 

Macron, who returned to face the political fallout in France yesterday following a multi-day state visit to Saudi Arabia, has defiantly announced he will not leave office until his term ends in 2027.

‘It so happens that if I am here before you, it is because I was elected twice by the French people,’ Macron declared while in Riyadh, describing calls for his resignation as ‘political fiction’.

Curiously, the far-right have not openly called on Macron to step down despite their matriarch Le Pen’s obvious disdain for the President.

National Rally president Jordan Bardella said yesterday he was ‘respectful of institutions,’ adding that ‘there is no justification at this time for the President of the Republic to leave.’

But some observers have suggested that Le Pen, 56, is seeking to bring down Macron before his term ends by ousting Barnier in a wider political ploy. 

Le Pen, who is widely expected to challenge for the presidency in 2027, is also embroiled in a high-profile embezzlement trial. 

If found guilty in March, she could be blocked from participating in France’s next presidential election.

She has insisted, however, that her party’s decision to vote in favour of a no-confidence motion against Barnier was entirely about his budget proposal that she said would make the French poorer.

By following the ‘catastrophic continuity of Emmanuel Macron’, the prime minister ‘could only fail’, she wrote on social media.