Macron must compromise to keep the French far right at bay

After burning through five prime ministers in less than two years, the conflagration is threatening to engulf French President Emmanuel Macron, with calls for his resignation or a snap election.

The demands come after France’s third prime minister in a year, Sébastien Lecornu, resigned after his bid to form a government fell apart after only 28 days in the job. Macron has convinced Lecornu to stay in an attempt to resolve the crisis but has also suggested if that fails a second dissolution of parliament and fresh legislative elections are on the cards.

Macron has become an influential international leader since his election in 2015, but at home his days as a golden boy are long gone as France returned to the chaos and division that denoted the Fourth Republic during its 12-year existence after the Second World War.

A stubborn determination to preserve his economic legacy of tax cuts and a pension overhaul at a time of growing investor concern about France’s swelling deficit has left Macron politically isolated and perhaps terminally unpopular.

Despite the naysayers, Macron managed to win two presidential elections and came to play a vital role in the European Union, especially since Brexit and the departure of Angela Merkel as German chancellor. He is the only leader with the authority to overcome the 27-country bloc’s competing commercial interests and make it focus on the big global picture.

Macron also assumed a key role in the EU’s support for Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, and stood up to China’s growing power, including by sending French warships to assert freedom of navigation in the disputed waters in the South China Sea. For Australia, his role in balancing China’s influence in the Pacific is crucial given the strategic position of French territory New Caledonia near the Solomon Islands border.

Domestically, his centrist ideology helped heal French society after the horrific Bataclan terror attacks and the influx of migrants in 2015, but his centrist alliance lost its outright majority in the parliamentary elections of 2022. Subsequently, defeat by a left-wing coalition in the snap poll he called last year also forced Macron to muddle through on minority cabinets, with his appointees as prime minister unable to pass budgets.

Macron’s arrival as president proved an insurmountable block to the French right, which had been invigorated by growing dissatisfaction over immigration and security. He won the presidency promising to halt the further rise of the right, but growing disgruntlement with Macron’s intransigence on the economy may have helped Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally increase its vote from 20 per cent to 32 per cent in the past three years to lead opinion polls.

Fresh legislative elections carry the possibility of handing power to the National Rally, but whatever the result the chaos is also a free kick to Le Pen ahead of presidential elections in 2027.

Further renaissance of the racist French right is undesirable in decent society, and Macron must loosen his policies to avoid such a tragic legacy.

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