But the 2024 Christmas edition promises that little more to savour: the country’s turbulent politics will provide food for thought… and conversation.
Even for France, it’s been a year of superlatives: the most cabinets in one year (four in total), the shortest electoral campaign period (three weeks from when President Macron called that June snap election), the shortest-lived PM (Barnier, lasting only three months), the most divided parliament (three blocs, no clear majority for any), and, this one is arguable, the deepest political crisis in modern French history. Plenty to chew on.
Read more:
In many ways, the turmoil that France knows now had its seeds sown in the spring. Winding back, it all started when President Emmanuel Macron shocked the electorate – and many members of his own party – on 9 June by announcing the dissolving of the lower chamber, the National Assembly, and a snap general election in the weeks to follow.
Why? Clarity, he said. His own centrist Renaissance party’s defeat at the EU parliamentary elections that same day were, he argued, a call to let the nation express its wishes in a new parliament. What was he really thinking? A roll of the dice, a test for the far right National Rally should they come out top. To this day, the issue is still a matter of debate.
It had long been polled that the National Rally, under Marine Le Pen and rising-star Jordan Bardella, would come out top. They did. But Macron’s gamble had not been foreseen. His then Prime Minister of just five months, Gabriel Attal, had himself, it was reported, not been informed. Inside Renaissance HQ in Paris that evening, the mood was one of disbelief. Party allies and members reacted cautiously in support of the decision, but with a sense of apprehension as to what the move may bring next. On the streets the next morning, a mix of folly, fear, and frankness: Macron would be Macron. The president of the Republic, it was commonly argued, enjoyed a gamble.
The weeks that ensued saw parties pull together a campaign, canvass drained citizens, and strategise on suitable alliances. The French legislative electoral system is a two-round majority system, meaning that in the second round, calls from defeated parties as to where supporters should place their ballot tend to give pollsters a migraine.
On the left, several left-leaning and green parties, in a miraculously short period of time, joined forces to create the New Popular Front, a left-wing grouping largely dominated by the hard-left France Unbowed.
Round one: the far-right National Rally came out top, Macron’s grouping pushed back to a largely weakened third position. Global media flocked to France – Le Pen making significant gains. Anti-fascist demonstrations followed. Calls for a “Republican Front” were made loud and clear (a move to block out the far right by voting strategically against them). And, in turn, round two saw the National Rally being pushed back – the New Popular Front come out top. The centrists were squeezed in the middle.
Why did all this matter? The evolving political climate landed France in a never-before-seen divided and fragmented state, making the job of governing near to impossible. It is the president who then picks the man – or woman – for the job of PM. Usually a relatively speedy affair – but Macron took the most-part of the summer to figure it out. Of course, the games in Paris proved a distraction – or a truce as it was called. But with back-to-school blues also came an abrupt reminder of the chaos in French politics.
Michel Barnier was appointed on 5 September – another gamble perhaps, in some ways, but above all a name that had not been circulating much in and outside political circles. The left-wing New Popular Front saw their candidate, Lucie Castets, gaining consensus across the varyingly divergent colours of the left alliance, snubbed, leading to further upset in the assembly.
Barnier’s political home was the conservative Republicans, a party coming fourth in the election. But contrary to a left-wing candidate that would face an immediate vote of no-confidence, Macron had argued at the time, a centre-right-leaning applicant would fit the role. Barnier had of course a long track record of a life in politics with over 50 years in office, and above all, was the chief Brexit negotiator for the European Commission. A chief mediator role if ever there was one.
But it all backfired. In his remarkably short time in office – Barnier himself initially admitted he didn’t expect to last a day – his stumbling block was ultimately the budget. The belt-tightening measures he put forward in an attempt to address France’s burgeoning public deficit levels would not win over parliament, he felt, so he used a constitutional mechanism to force through the legislation without a vote. This, alongside the divided nature of the assembly, provoked the left and far-right blocs into lodging a vote of no-confidence held on 4 December. Barnier lost.
Enter PM number four of the year. Chosen in a significantly shorter period of time with not the Olympics as a summer distraction but Notre Dame’s reopening as a weekend leisure break, François Bayrou of the centrist MoDem party replaced Michel Barnier. A veteran politician, stalwart supporter of Macron, economically more or less on the same pages as Barnier but, across the board, a respected politician able to, Macron will hope, rally the troops from the left-wing socialist party through to the right-wing Republicans.
On Bayrou’s plate for the new year are a number of thorny issues. Not least his predecessor’s hurdle at which he tripped, but also the overall challenges of cohesion that both parliament and the nation face. The handover of power came at time when the neighbouring EU powerhouse, Germany, confronts its own political demise with a snap election looming too. And the world map is also set to change with Trump returning to office. Post-election calls in November underpinned solidarity and strength across the European bloc – Macron said at the time the world was made up of herbivores and carnivores, and Europe needed to become an omnivore, or words to that effect.
But whatever’s on Macron’s plate for Noël, it is in his choice of dessert for new year that he will be judged. The odd cry of impeachment measures won’t seem to shake him – or are unlikely to work in any case – and he has said how it was his duty to last out until 2027 when the next presidential election is currently calendared. The judgement will increasingly come from outside political circles. His popularity rating is already at an all-time low, and polls continue to show rising support for the far right.
Indeed, much like many of her neighbour’s, France’s far right has continued to gain ground in 2024 through a cocktail of cost-of-living crises, conflict on Europe’s external borders, and the much-broadcast (unfounded) fear of illegal immigration as the burden of all ills. The National Rally has also benefited from an increasingly polarised, weary and defeated electorate as centrist politics collapses and, despite efforts, the left remains woefully disjointed.
Such disparity and fragmentation have led to some political commentators to state how France is not just in a political crisis, but also a democratic crisis. The fifth Republic’s constitutional framework is no longer fit for purpose. But what could possibly replace it in a country, unlike some of its neighbours, seemingly allergic to negotiation, coalition-making and compromise (or maybe it’s merely an intolerance).
In the meantime, will Bayrou last more than three months? Will Macron dissolve the parliament again when he can in the summer? Is Le Pen France’s next president? Plenty of fodder for the Christmas meal chatter. One thing on which all at the Christmas table up and down France can agree in the coming days: the nation is in (deep) crisis. Maybe it’s a good thing they don’t do Christmas crackers in France – no need for an artificial bang. The country’s already on the verge of imploding.
