Ex-French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, a longtime ally of President Emmanuel Macron, has called for his former boss to hold early presidential elections to end the political crisis facing the country.
Philippe, who served as President Macron’s prime minister from 2017 to 2020 before returning to his post as Mayor of Le Havre, has become the first major figure from within the Macronist neo-liberal establishment to suggest that the president should not serve out the remaining two years of his second and final term in office, a notion Macron has hitherto consistently shot down.
Speaking in the wake of the collapse of the third government in Paris in under a year, Philippe called for an “early” presidential election. However, the Horizon party leader and likely presidential candidate said that first Macron should appoint another government to pass a budget so that a presidential election could take place “under good conditions”.
“We are not forcing the president. I am not in favour of his abrupt resignation,” he said per Le Figaro, but added that “time is running out” to pass a budget and that from his perspective, the only “way out of the crisis rests with Emmanuel Macron, and he must live up to his mandate.”
Meanwhile, another ex-prime minister and leader of Macron’s Renaissance party in the National Assembly, Gabriel Attal was also critical of his former boss, saying that he “no longer understands the decisions” of Macron, who, he said, gives the impression of “stubbornly trying to keep control”.
Yet, Attal rejected calls for the president to resign or to call for fresh legislative elections, arguing instead in favour of seeking to come to a budget compromise between the various parties and then finding a new PM to implement the agreement.
However, coming to any agreement may prove easier said than done, given that many of the parties are refusing to even be in the same room as each other.
This started with the frequently fractured left-wing of the National Assembly, which was forced to hold competing meetings on Tuesday, with the Socialist Party boycotting a meeting hosted by the green Ecologists over the involvement of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI/France in Rebellion) party of former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The Socialists will instead hold a separate meeting with Communist Party leader, Fabien Roussel, and various other smaller leftist parties.
Additionally, National Rally leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella said on Tuesday morning that they have “declined” an invitation by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu — who resigned on Monday after just 27 days in office — for a meeting to discuss a potential future government and budget agreement.
Le Pen, a three-time presidential candidate and current frontrunner to replace Macron in the scheduled 2027 presidential election, said on Monday that the only options left to her longtime rival are either to dissolve the parliament and hold legislative elections or resign from his post.
However, the populist faction has made overtures to the Républicains, with party president Bardella suggesting that the National Rally would be willing to form an alliance with the centre-right party in the event of a dissolution of the parliament
“I will not show any sectarianism. To win, you have to unite, which is why last year I proposed an alliance to Éric Ciotti , the president of the Republicans,” Bardella said.
Yet, it appears that current Républicains leader Bruno Retailleau — as is typical of supposed conservatives in Europe — is still more interested in finding an agreement to form a government with Macron’s liberals rather than with Le Pen. Retailleau, who collapsed the government on Monday with threats to resign over lack of representation in the cabinet, said that he would be open to a government of “cohabitation” in which his party is given more posts in a Macronist government.
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