French President Emmanuel Macron has come out fighting following the ousting of his Prime Minister Michel Barnier this week.
Macron, who has been faced with calls to resign, sat defiantly last night as he gave a televised address to the nation from the Golden Room of the Elysée Palace. In it, he laid the blame for France’s political turmoil at the feet of parties on the left and right of French politics, whom he called “extremists” seeking to wreak “disorder” on the nation.
Barnier, 73, the former Brexit negotiator for the EU, became the shortest-lived prime minister in recent French history after the right supported a vote of no confidence called by the left.
Macron accused opposition MPs of not being interested in the needs of ordinary French families and, instead, being driven by a desire to force presidential elections “with cynicism and a certain sense of chaos.”
On calls for him to resign, he responded: “The term that you democratically gave me is a five-year term and I will fulfil it until the end,” as he vowed to appoint a new Prime Minister in the next few days.
Macron is understood to have met with several candidates for the role. However, internal party politics has hampered his attempts to have somebody in place ahead of the re-opening of the Notre Dame Cathedral, which will see up to 50 world leaders, including Donald Trump, in attendance.
Reports suggest that many within his party oppose his first choice, Sébastien Lecornu, the armed forces minister, over his close links to Marine Le Pen, the figurehead of the National Rally.
Other candidates include François Bayrou, the centrist mayor of Pau in the Pyrenees. Some expect Macron to try to build a coalition from the centre-right to the centre-left to help end the political turmoil.
Bayrou is experienced, having twice held cabinet positions and was instrumental in helping Macron claim the presidency in 2017 when still a relative outsider.
Bayrou, the leader of the small, centrist Democratic Movement party, was in Macron’s first cabinet but was forced to resign after becoming embroiled in an embezzlement scandal, which he later acquitted of.
Barnier’s short-lived spell as Prime Minister ends following his attempts to force through his social security budget which sought to rein in France’s spiralling deficit through €60bn (£49bn) in tax rises and spending cuts.
Macron used his statement to claim that he would instruct the new Prime Minister to form a “government of general interest” that would bring together people from across the political spectrum to “join it, or at least commit themselves not to vote a motion of no confidence against it.”
