The many consultations and Elysée visits (former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy visited early this week) that Emmanuel Macron is orchestrating are now becoming something of a public joke, and this continues to erode the credibility of the president.
At the time of writing (Thursday) our view is that Bernard Cazeneuve is the most likely prime minister – because of his experience, left of centre political orientation (though the far left don’t like him) and his potential ability to organise a credible cabinet. That Cazeneuve is the obvious candidate might, in the twisted logic of French politics, count against him.
Our sense is that if he is not confirmed – the prime minister will be someone very much like him. Another similar option from the centre-right is Xavier Bertrand of the Republican party.
The advantage of Cazeneuve is that he has already ‘done the job’ and knows the workings of the French system (unlike say Lucie Castets the far left candidate) and this would mean that he can quickly organise a government ahead of the pending budget. The difficulty that someone like Cazeneuve presents to Macron, is that Cazeneuve would likely have a greater hand in selecting the ministers to make up a government. For context, in the French system, the prime minister is very much like the chief of staff to the president in the US system – someone who works intensively to implement the government’s programme. As such policy on detailed areas like technology depends less on the identity of the PM.
This is the next step to watch. Our suspicion is that behind the Cazeneuve candidacy process there is a lot of horse trading as to who the senior ministers in the next government will be. It is likely that the cabinet will partly be made up of grandees from the Socialist/Ensemble-Horizons/Republicans parties and it cannot be ruled out that someone like Francois Hollande takes up a senior ministry (which would irritate Macron).
Against this backdrop two trends are clear. First, unusually in French politics, parliament will be the centre of political action, and the parties in parliament will have relatively more power. Moves to censure the government and the president may become more frequent.
Second, relatedly, Macron is squandering his credibility – both within his own party and across France. We expect that the parties of the far right and left will try hard to upstage him, and for the centre oriented parties (including his former allies), the race for the 2027 presidency is now very much ‘on’. A very interesting move is that Edouard Philippe, a former prime minister has just declared his candidacy for the 2027 election.
Apart from talk of a constitutional crisis (France has gone 50 days without a government) there is greater focus now on the budget (needs to be ready by the end of September), which at a moment when many parties want to spend more, will demand budget cuts of close to Eur 20bn. This will be the source of the next political crisis.
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