French President Emmanuel Macron continues to encounter political trouble as his next government faces the possibility of another no confidence vote after the toppling of his prime minister, Michel Barnier.
The former Brexit negotiator who acted for the EU during negotations with Britain was ousted after a vote in the National Assembly yesterday.
Three months after Macron appointed him, left and far-right parties united to collapse the government over its controversial Budget proposal.
Now, the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) party has said it will automatically call for a vote of no confidence against the next prime minister if they are not from the New Popular Front (NPF) – a broad left-wing parliamentary alliance.
When asked if the LFI group in the National Assembly would automatically censure a government whose prime minister is not from the NFP, Mathilde Panot, president of the La France Insoumise group, told LCI: “Of course.”
Le Figaro reports that this would also apply to Bernard Cazeneuve, a center-left figure ‘who is not from the NFP’.
Marine Le Pen’s party made a similar vow. MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy told RTL: “We won’t make a pact, our red lines are clear,” he said, promising that the National Rally would also call for a vote of no confidence against the next government if it does not take into account their demands.
Newspapers in France have been reflecting on the collapse of Michel Barnier’s government. Le Figaro calls it “a brutal end to an impossible mission, which has opened a political and budgetery crisis”.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme added: “Libération says it leaves President Emmanuel Macron ‘weaker than ever’, and says he ‘must find a response as quickly as possible.”
The show’s host added: “It points out it’s the first French government to be overthrown in this was since Georges Pompidou in 1962.”
