The timeline of Lecornu is so funny:

• Gets chosen as prime minister and says in one of his first allocution “I will be the PM of change”
• Waits a month and appoints exactly the same recycled losers
• Quits a day after appointing them

Edit: The left party “La France Insoumise” (France unbowed) calls for new presidential elections as they have done for the past months and the far right “Rassemblement National” is calling for a parliamentary dissolution.

As for what Macron will do/can do, from what I’ve read around the time of Bayrou’s political suicide, it seems to me that the smartest thing Macron can do is, counter-intuitively, another dissolution. Indeed, Macron broadly has three choices:

1. Macron could name another PM from his camp. This is a bad choice because that is what he has done so far, with each PM being ever closer to Macron himself; and consequently the political discourse in the country has shifted from it being impossible around the time of the dissolution (2024) to think of Macron leaving power before the 2027 elections to his impeachment/resignation being talked about about as a serious possibility. The more unsuccessful PMs Macron named, the more they were closer to Macron politically and personally, the more the people see in Macron—and him alone—the source of the current political crisis.

2. Macron could use article 16, giving him emergency powers, to then pass next year’s budget without needing parliamentary or governmental approval. He could probably argue that the constitutional requirements are met. However, when article 16 is used, the president cannot dissolve the National Assembly, and the National Assembly can still be in session. And him using emergency powers to pass the budget might be exactly this kind of event that increases the likelihood of an impeachment procedure succeeding (right now, there’s no way in hell it would succeed). Using article 16 in this way may be political suicide.

3. Macron could dissolve the National Assembly. He’d obviously lose the new elections hard, but he’d stay president and the parliament would probably still be split three-ways. AND, contrary to option 1., if he resigned/was impeached and another president was elected, the new president would still have to wait a year to dissolve the National Assembly. Thus, Macron could shift the responsibility for the crisis from himself onto the National Assembly, by arguing that the deadlock couldn’t be solved by new presidential elections. This situation would last until late 2026, after which the presidential elections would be very close.

This is why, in my opinion, the best thing Macron can do to guarantee his self-preservation (which is all he really cares about) is another dissolution. Of course, this also was the best move for Macron before he named Lecornu, so you could argue that he probably won’t do that. However, Lecornu was so close to Macron that I don’t see how he could continue naming a PM that would be even closer to him (which is what he has done since the dissolution): he was a close ally of Macron ever since his 2017 campaign, and the only person to have been a minister under every one of Marcon’s governments.

There is one argument that you could levy against mine, however, which is that the constitutional council has previously ruled that it could not rule on the constitutionality of a dissolution decree, as this is a pouvoir propre of the president (a power possessed by the president alone). So, you could argue that, if there would be new presidential elections just after a dissolution, the new president could dissolve the national assembly before the one year delay because the constitutional council couldn’t rule that his decree to do so was unconstitutional. If the new president had argued during his campaign that he would do so, I don’t see why this act wouldn’t be seen as legitimate despite its apparent unconstitutionality. However, given that Macron would be deeply invested in shaping the narrative around the dissolution, I don’t think such an argument could gain enough traction to actually have an effect on whether or not anticipated presidential elections are called (and regardless, Macron has proven time and time again that he doesn’t care about any opinion other than his own).

He was 5th PM this term, not the 4th. There was Borne and Attal pre-dissolution, and then Barnier, Bayrou and now Lecornu. Regardless, GET FUCKED! Lecornu became the shortest-lasting PM of the 5th Republic, three-times as short-lasting as the previous record-holder Barnier