After Bayrou: What Keeps the Bourgeois Bloc (and its Allies) Running in the Same Direction — Or, the Politics of Wile E. Coyote

Repetition, into the void

We’ve all heard about the recurrent misadventures of Wile E. Coyote, a character from Tex Avery’s cartoons who is obsessed with a desert bird known as the Road Runner. At a certain point in the chase, the coyote, carried away by his own momentum, races over a precipice and blithely continues running into the void. The laws of gravity are broken, and yet he keeps on running as if nothing had happened. That is, until the moment when he finally looks down and discovers that he is suspended in the air, hanging over a gaping void. This void then becomes “effective”, and the laws of physics reassert themselves. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek often cites this case to illustrate the “veil of ignorance” which, in certain situations, has a protective function — a paradox linked to the discrepancy between the objective reality of a situation and the moment when it is subjectively perceived, and thus becomes really effective. It should be noted, however, that what triggers this subjective perception is not so much “coming to awareness” in the sense of a mental process taking place within consciousness, but a gesture, an act: looking at one’s feet.

This raises two questions: first, what prompts the coyote to make this fatal move? And what does this strange blue bird represent allegorically? On this second point, we have a clear indication: as the onomatopoeic name given to it in French (“Bip-Bip”) suggests, the bird represents repetition as such, in other words the emptiness of blind, indestructible repetition, which is its goal. The Road Runner never drops its imperturbable, satisfied expression; and it is the insolent display of this pure libidinal enjoyment that fuels Coyote’s rage to chase him. All the cartoons in this series are built on the contrast between the bird’s incessant but always identical movement and the ever-changing stratagems of Coyote, entirely devoted to his obsession, no less repetitive and meaningless than the beep-beep sound emitted by the running bird. It is quite logical that it is in the void, i.e. in the gaping hole of repetition, that the opposition between the two instinctual movements “falls”, only to reappear immediately in the images that follow the fall: because Tex Avery’s characters are indestructible, they represent, according to Žižek, the “undead”, the perpetually recurring cycle of the depersonalised death drive. 

There is an obvious parallel with the fate of French prime minister François Bayrou. All it took was the announcement of a social movement for September 10 — all the more worrying because this mobilisation’s scale and nature are unpredictable — for Bayrou to make the fatal move. He now “realised” that he had no parliamentary majority and that the tricks he had used to stay “in the race” thus far would not be enough to achieve his goal — except, of course, to buy time for the bourgeois camp. This is a hardly negligible element, especially in a situation of political crisis. In these circumstances, Bayrou’s call for a confidence vote in the National Assembly [ending in defeat on 8 September] appeared as the last-ditch manoeuvre to pre-empt the mobilisation that had been called, and to put pressure on the force that has enabled him to stay in power up to this point, namely the Socialist Party. Still, a government incapable of getting a budget passed by the National Assembly was doomed to suffer the same fate as the government led by his predecessor, Michel Barnier, who was himself brought down by a no-confidence vote last December.

While all this is obvious, there are still a few points to be clarified, which too often remain in the shadows.[1] Taking inspiration from Tex Avery’s choreography, we will look at what enabled Bayrou to continue the race above the void for much longer than his predecessor had. We will also analyse the conditions through which the deadly chase (deadly for the working and popular classes) engaged by the various figures in the Macron camp — so cartoonish in their blissful jouissance in power — could continue, with a change of Cunning Coyote, at least in the form we have known since summer 2024 [the snap parliamentary elections, where Macron’s allies fell far short of any kind of mandate or majority]. But, first, we will consider what real objective Bayrou — and behind him the entire bourgeois bloc of which Macron remains the linchpin — are pursuing in the immediate. What kind of Road Runner?

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The European Union, or the compulsive repetition of budgetary orthodoxy

François Bayrou’s obsession with public debt is an old one. It has often been the focus of sarcastic comments, which make Bayrou appear as a kind of failed Cassandra. While the heroine of Greek mythology made dire predictions which were borne out in reality, Bayrou’s forecasts have been contradicted by the course of events. No debt crisis has affected France since 2007, when the Modem [a neoliberal “centrist” party] presidential candidate Bayrou made this spectre the central theme of his discourse. There is probably no need to demonstrate at length here the reality that — today as in the past — this alarmist rhetoric serves to justify neoliberal policies, or more precisely austerity policies, which combine lower taxation for capital and the wealthy with restrictions on public spending, primarily at the expense of social welfare.[2] Left-wing economists have repeatedly demonstrated the fallacious nature of Bayrou’s claims, particularly those on which the current draft budget is based: public debt is never paid off, only the interest is paid, and this burden is sustainable, and even significantly lower than in the past, despite the increase in the stock of this debt. The same goes for claims that the growing budget deficit, which leads to government debt, is caused by excessive spending, whether on public investment, day-to-day government operating costs, or social transfers. In reality, the problem lies on the revenue side, i.e. in the tax breaks given to capital and wealthy households. These tax breaks have reached unprecedented levels since the beginning of Macron’s presidency, though his predecessors, notably François Hollande (with his continuous reduction in the “burden” on corporations and capital taxation, CICE [Crédit d’Impôt pour la Compétitivité et l’Emploi, one of most significant tax break measures taken during the Hollande presidency supposedly to enhance R&D in the private sector], etc.), had already raced along this path.[3]

This counter-analysis is both relevant and politically necessary faced with the dominant discourse, which is so incessantly relayed in the media and by government spokespersons. However, if we stop there, we risk missing the internal logic of Bayrou’s discourse, which is not simply ideological mystification but a coherent political project that extends far beyond his own person and has very concrete consequences. This project has a name: the European Union, and the rules and procedures on which it is based. It is itself part of the longer-term trends of contemporary capitalism: the crisis of the post-war Keynesian state and its radical reshaping by neoliberalism and financialisation. German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck has described this transformation as a shift from the fiscal state of the previous period, oriented towards redistribution and the maintenance of the postwar Fordist social compromise, to the debt state, which is based on an institutionalised regime of fiscal consolidation aimed at placing it under the permanent supervision of the financial markets.[4] At the root of this process is the “fiscal crisis of the state” triggered by the crisis of the 1970s,[5]  with a decline in revenues (as is bound to result from falling growth rates) and the maintenance of high spending levels  – or even, initially, an increase in them — due to the relative rigidity of Keynesian “automatic stabilisers” aimed at tackling rising unemployment and the recessionary effects of an inflationary environment. Public debt, which had remained at a very low level until the early 1980s, began to rise around the world. The neoliberal response to this crisis was based on the joint “fiscal revolt” of capital, faced with declining profitability, and of the wealthy. Both challenged the postwar redistributive pact and bet on the neoliberal privatisation of the conditions of social reproduction. This “fiscal revolt” was amplified by the dual movement toward both “globalisation” and financialisation, which freed up capital movements and encouraged fiscal dumping across states’ borders. The rise of finance is, in turn, fuelled by speculation on public debt and household debt, which compensates for the withdrawal of the welfare state (in education, health, access to housing, pensions, etc.) and, for the mass of wage earners, stagnant wages.

“Fiscal consolidation” is thus presented as a mechanism which aims to “build confidence”, i.e. to make the state attractive to the financial markets by assuring them that it is able to service its debt. The financial markets want assurance that public debt is effectively under political control, which must be demonstrated by governments’ ability to halt or even reverse the long-term rise in indebtedness. In practice, this consolidation inevitably involves the continuous cutting of public spending, particularly social spending, the ongoing privatisation of public assets and the concomitant transformation of the welfare state into a state aimed at disciplining the workforce (a workfare state).[6] This authoritarian and repressive shift is only compounded by the democratic dispossession inherent in the fiscal consolidation mechanism as such. Its institutionalisation requires that the state prove its unyielding determination to put its obligations to its creditors before all others. This requires a political configuration that makes it difficult to increase spending and facilitates budget cuts, except for debt servicing and so-called “sovereign” expenditure (defence, police, etc.). As Streeck points out, such a state “firmly internali[ses] the primacy of the state’s commercial-contractual commitments to its lenders over its public-political commitments to its citizenry. In a consolidation state, citizens lose out to investors, rights of citizenship are trumped by claims from commercial contracts, voters range below creditors, the results of elections are less important than those of bond auctions, public opinion matters less than interest rates and citizen loyalties less than investor confidence, and debt service crowds out public services”.[7] 

It is quite clear that the EU has been the fundamental vehicle for the construction of such a fiscal-consolidation regime, indeed in a geographical space where the balance of social forces made its implementation more difficult than in the English-speaking world. Its tablets of stone were set out in the famous “criteria” established by the Maastricht Treaty and tightened up by subsequent treaties and pacts: budget deficits capped at 3% of GDP and public debt at 60% of GDP, along with the priority given to controlling inflation. These criteria do not simply stem from an ideological choice: they aim to lend international credibility to the idea of a strong euro, a single currency unprecedented in history since it is not backed by the central bank of a unified state and therefore does not have the intervention capabilities of the US Federal Reserve, to which it is often compared. Hence the obsession with ordoliberal orthodoxy, which had already secured the German Mark’s status as a strong currency, as opposed to the French Franc, subjected to frequent devaluations. This is also why the European Central Bank (ECB) is both “independent”, i.e. free from political control (and this is the hallmark of the EU’s institutions) and bound by a single mandate: to keep inflation below 2%. Its statutes prohibit member states from resorting to domestic debt, thus making impossible something like the “Treasury circuit” which, between the end of WW2 and the end of the 1960s, enabled the French state to finance itself without resorting to the markets. With the single currency, eurozone states are now required to finance themselves on the international markets and, to this end, to continually demonstrate their compliance with the macroeconomic consolidation constraints codified in the EU’s treaties. Since the 2015 crisis, the ECB surely has intervened (massively so, between 2015 and 2022) in the secondary market for the public debt of EU member states. However, even beyond the fact that this is a temporary measure, the decisive role of the primary market is not called into question, as the ECB’s interventions are far from meeting all the financing needs of member states. Thus, between 2015 and 2022, at the peak of this repurchasing policy, the ECB purchased only the equivalent of 48% of the debt issued by France, and the ECB currently holds (via the Banque de France) less than one-quarter of French debt, and this share is rapidly diminishing since the end of the “quantitative easing” policy. The majority (54.7% according to 2025 figures) is now in the hands of “foreign residents”. The composition of this category is particularly opaque, as it is protected by the anonymity of the Commercial Code. Mainly, though, it consists of “institutional investors” (banks, pension funds, insurance funds, sovereign wealth funds, and other hedge funds) whose behaviour is by definition opportunistic, i.e. extremely sensitive to the slightest trembling of the “markets”. Thus, far from counteracting the influence of the markets on governments, the ECB continues to act as their most loyal supporter, adjusting its policy to the cycles of capital accumulation.

Since the crisis of 2010-15, the consolidation regime imposed by the EU has in fact become even more rigid. The only ephemeral relaxation of its constraints during the COVID-19 period, when the rules fixed in the EU’s treaties were suspended, led some inveterate Europhiles to declare the end of the austerity straitjacket.[8] In a milder form, such illusions had also spread to the Left. This is particularly evident in the NUPES [New Ecological and Social Popular Union, broad-left electoral alliance] programme of 2022, which stated (in its eighth section) that “it is to our advantage that, faced with emergencies [the consequences of the pandemic] European rules are being called into question”. This lent a semblance of credibility to the mantra of “renegotiating the European treaties”, supposedly allowing for a “permanent rewriting of rules that are incompatible with our social and ecological ambitions, as legitimised by the people". This proposal was doomed to remain mere rhetoric: everyone knows that it is impossible to change a single comma in these treaties without unanimous agreement from all member states.

Moreover, once the pandemic was over, the intangible laws engraved in the marble of the treaties immediately regained the upper hand, and even in a more severe form. In fact, the process had been underway since the eurozone crisis of 2010-15. A set of monitoring mechanisms — referred to in EU newspeak as the “Six Pack”, “Two Pack” and “European Semester” — were introduced, allowing the Brussels authorities to police budgetary policies more closely, notably by making penalties more automatic and systematising the implementation of structural adjustment plans for countries facing financial difficulties, based on the model used for Greece. The introduction of an “enhanced surveillance” regime is planned as part of the implementation of these programmes, until 75% of the debt has been repaid. The adoption of the “reformed Stability and Growth Pact” at the start of 2024 marked the definitive end of the “spending spree” of the COVID-19 years and the return of austerity: henceforth countries with a budget deficit of more than 3% will have to reduce it by at least 0.5 percentage points of GDP per year. In addition, member states with debt between 60% and 90% of GDP will have to reduce it by 0.5 percentage points per year, and those with debt exceeding 90% will have to reduce it by 1 percentage point per year.

Admittedly, formally speaking, EU treaties do not preclude higher taxation of capital and the wealthy. Nevertheless, by virtue of the famous ‘freedoms’ that have guided European integration since its inception[9], they enshrine the free movement of goods, services and capital. In practice, this means that if the government of a member-state increases taxes on capital, the latter can (threaten to) move to a neighbouring country without losing access to the market of the country it is leaving (due to the free movement of goods and services). Thus, the combination of budgetary rules and the principles of “free and undistorted competition” leads to a situation where there is no other option for budgetary adjustment than cutting expenditure. The EU treaties and pact therefore institutionalise fiscal paralysis by putting in place mechanisms that apply permanently, even in the absence of pressure from financial markets.[10]

Like Tex Avery’s Road Runner, the EU is condemned to endlessly repeating the “Bip-Bip” of austerity and neoliberal orthodoxy enshrined in its founding treaties. Yet in this case, this repetition is anything but meaningless, and it serves not some unconscious psychological mechanism but class interests which can perfectly well be identified. It also has much more serious consequences than the Coyote’s spectacular plunging from great heights, from which he always eventually emerges unscathed, namely the sanctions imposed by the “markets” and their voice within the EU, namely the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Greece has been the most dramatic example of this, but we should not forget that a large part of the European periphery (Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus) has also suffered. The recent statement by Christine Lagarde, in her capacity as President of the ECB, is quite clear in this regard for those who know how to decode this type of language: "The risks of government collapse in all eurozone countries are worrying. What I have observed over the past six years [in this position] is that political developments and the emergence of political risks have a clear impact on the economy and on the financial markets’ assessment of country risks, and are therefore a cause for concern for us." Today’s France is surely not the Greece of 2015, but that does not make it a merely separate case, as if some miracle of French grandeur could exempt it from the constraints to which its ruling class and the politicians who serve it have subjected it for decades.

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Barnier and Bayrou’s austerity race

Seen from this perspective, the events of the past year in France appear in a new light. One little-discussed fact is essential, here. In order to cement his denial of the results of the June-July 2024 parliamentary elections [in which the left-wing New Popular Front won more seats than any other camp, but was not allowed to try to govern], Macron successively appointed two right-wing prime ministers, Michel Barnier and François Bayrou. Both men share an absolute loyalty to the European framework. Barnier is a former member of the EU Commission, and he represented it in the Brexit negotiations with the British government. Bayrou, a zealous supporter of the EU project, has made the radicalisation of Maastricht’s budgetary orthodoxy his trademark. He proposed, as early as his 2007 presidential campaign, to impose a constitutional ban on governments tabling a budget which presented a deficit, apart from during a period of recession. He thus anticipated by two years the constitutionalisation of this so-called “golden rule” by Germany, which had already enshrined the principle in its "Basic Law", which has served as the Federal Republic’s constitution since 1949, and its adoption at EU level in the 2012 European fiscal compact.

Macron’s choice of these prime ministers can only be understood if we take into account the EU Commission’s decision, announced in June 2024, to initiate proceedings against France for exceeding the thresholds regarding the budget deficit and public debt, in accordance with the provisions of the reformed Stability and Growth Pact. As stated in the official French government document of December 2024, “the European Commission has set a demanding path of reference: a structural adjustment representing 0.6 percentage points of GDP per year on average over the period”. Even before he appointed Barnier as premier, Macron had ensured continuity in economic policy by keeping in place the trio of senior officials at the French Ministry of Finance, close to presidential secretary Alexis Kohler, who have been pushing forward the broad outlines of Macronite economic policy since the beginning of his first term. The relationship with the EU and its fiscal consolidation regime are at the heart of this continuity. According to comments made by a former minister reported by Le Monde in September 2024, “their constants [those of these senior officials] boil down to two points: reassuring Brussels and placing the debt bonds issued by the French state onto the financial markets, whatever the ins-and-outs of circumstance. They know how to do this, they have all the networks and contacts to do so”. We have here a fine illustration of the classic Marxist thesis on the nature of the capitalist state: the continuity of the state apparatus beyond and despite changes of government, and even of political regime![11]

The race to comply with the EU’s reinforced austerity straitjacket is thus at the heart of the French political crisis. It is reasonable to assume that this factor was taken into account in Macron’s decision to call snap elections following his camp’s debacle in the European elections in June 2024. Upon dissolving parliament, the scenario he considered most likely was a government led by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. The possibility that such a National Rally government would have had no choice but to implement the austerity measures called for by Brussels, and then paid the electoral price for this later on, may have seemed a rational calculation, with a view to the 2027 presidential elections. Yet the actual result of the summer 2024 parliamentary elections, with the New Popular Front emerging as the largest camp (in terms of its number of seats) in the National Assembly, forced a change of approach. Of course, there was never any question of entrusting the figure proposed by the left-wing alliance with the prime minister’s job. The aim was to buy time, ensure the continuity of Macronism, which had been pushed into a clear minority, and — to that end — try to break up the left-wing alliance. This meant to “take the scalp of the New Popular Front” as Socialist leader Olivier Faure had clearly seen in August 2024, before he delivered Macronism the scalp himself six months later by refusing to vote for a no-confidence motion against the Bayrou government.

Barnier and Bayrou were never bearers of a genuine mandate to govern, which would have required at least a programme worthy of the name and a coherent political line approved by the electorate (it should be remembered that, unlike the New Popular Front, the de facto coalition between the Macronites and the conservative Republicans never stood for election as such. They are in fact mere executors of other’s orders. Their mission is to implement as quickly as possible the austerity measures stipulated by the European framework, exacerbated by the race towards militarisation launched by the EU since the start of the war in Ukraine. To carry out this “dirty work”, figures with no real political legitimacy, or even parliamentary base, are much preferable to governments accountable to voters. Instructive in this sense are precedents of Greece and Italy in 2011: there, the EU directly orchestrated the downfall of George Papandreou and Silvio Berlusconi, who were replaced by two bankers (Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti, respectively) at the head of motley, soon-faltering coalitions.

Since summer 2024, and France’s placement under enhanced surveillance, its budgetary policy has been nothing more than compliance with the “automatic pilot” provided for in the EU’s “Stability and Growth Pact” namely a “pathway” of budget cuts equivalent to a reduction in the deficit of at least 0.5% of GDP. The “annual progress reports” sent by the French government to Brussels each April are not only intended to detail the progress of the Medium-Term Budgetary and Structural Plan (MTBSP) for 2025-2029, i.e., as announced in last April’s official document, to “present a budgetary pathway that complies with the requirements of the new European budgetary rules as well as reforms and investments over time, justifying an extension of the budgetary adjustment period from four to seven years”. But there are some shades of differences between the two teams that have followed at the prime minister’s office since summer 2024: as explained in studies (here and here) by the Institut Avant-Garde, Barnier wanted to be overzealous, planning a “more ambitious adjustment than strictly required by European budgetary rules and [which] included a significant effort at the beginning of the period to reduce the public deficit to 5% in 2025”. Bayrou’s plan signalled a return to the “normality” stipulated by the EU’s budget pacts: it "remove[d] the initially planned concentration of efforts at the beginning of the period, and move[d] closer to the linear adjustment structure defined by EU budgetary rules. However, the total adjustment over the seven-year period from 2025 to 2031 remain[ed] unchanged”. Bayrou lowered the budget deficit reduction target for 2025 from 5.4% to 5% — i.e. a reduction target of 0.8% rather than 1.4% of GDP — but the reduction target for the following year was greater than Barnier’s (0.9% instead of 0.6%). Bayrou likely believed that this “loosening” of the fiscal straitjacket would be enough to renew, with a few cosmetic concessions (particularly on the proposed abolition of two public holidays), the acquiescence from the Socialist Party that had enabled him to become Prime Minister. This would confirm a political realignment in which the bourgeois bloc integrated a new component, thus renewing the foundational operation of Macron’s “extreme centre”: the convergence of “social liberalism” and the a fraction of the traditional right, under the banner of neoliberal "reforms” and France’s European allegiance. But, in the eyes of the current government and its allies, it seems that this objective can be achieved by other means, i.e. without a Bayrou who is already used-up and low on ammunition.

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A revamped Coyote: towards a recomposition of the bourgeois bloc?

Writing on 26 August in the business world’s daily, Patrick Martin, who is president of the [employers’ federation] MEDEF, could be credited with putting things clearly, and with some insight: “Surely, the Socialist Party remains the linchpin in this story”. Subsequent events proved him right — while disproving those who thought (and who pretend to believe) that the agreement between the Socialist Party and the Macron bloc in February [when the Socialists refused the opportunity to vote down the Bayrou government] was just a passing indiscretion, which could be quickly overcome with lyrical appeals to “left-wing unity”. As reported by Le Monde, the line that Macron presented to the representatives of the parties that support him is clear: the idea is to “work with the Socialists” to prepare for the post-Bayrou era. Gabriel Attal, secretary-general of Macron’s Renaissance party, agrees: “Whatever the outcome on 8 September [the no-confidence vote in Bayrou’s government, eventually lost 364-194], it is imperative that we sit down with the political forces that are prepared to work towards a compromise.” However, as the same article points out, "the presidential initiative was welcomed by Olivier Faure. … In Blois [where the Socialist Party summer university was held last August], during a lunch with the press, the Socialist Party leader reached out to the central bloc: ‘We are not seeking to create the programme of our dreams. We have to try to build a project that can find a majority’.” The shared objective is thus to avoid fresh snap elections by seeking “compromises” that would go further in the direction of the “flexibility” envisaged by Bayrou without calling into question the structural adjustment as such. Raphaël Glucksmann [a left-liberal close to the right wing of the Socialists, and putative 2027 presidential candidate] was even clearer than Faure after his meeting with Macron: the aim is to open a “genuine negotiation process” which “the announcement of the vote on 8 September” unfortunately made impossible. The mayor of Nantes, Johanna Rolland, speaking in Mediapart as the first deputy secretary of the Socialist Party, is on the same wavelength: "it is illusory to suggest that dissolving parliament would resolve the country’s situation". The aim is to “govern now”, with a team that would range “from Glucksmann to [François] Ruffin [an independent MP, once close to France Insoumise but now sharply critical of Jean-Luc Mélenchon]” and seek “majorities on a case-by-case basis”. The chances of the current president accepting this type of scenario are nil. But the real objective is not so much to allow such a government to come into being as to encourage a “centrist” political realignment that could last until the next presidential election. 

This is the aim of the “alternative budget” presented by the Socialist Party (without the slightest reference, it should be noted, to the New Popular Front programme on which it ran in summer 2024). After all, [its proposal] to halve the level of structural adjustment basically amounts to setting the bar at the minimum threshold required in the EU’s fiscal pact (i.e. to reduce the deficit by half a percentage point of GDP per year) and to request an additional year to bring it down below the magic 3% mark (by 2032 rather than 2031). At the press conference following the Socialist Party summer university, Faure was very clear on this point: "The balances are unchangeable, unless we want to say that we cannot govern." Laurence Rossignol, Senator for Val-de-Marne, echoed this sentiment: "The spirit of this plan … is to proclaim that ‘yes, we agree that a path of deficit reduction is necessary’." A few largely symbolic measures, such as the Zucman tax [on wealth] – which some party leaders are already suggesting could be reduced – or the trimming of certain tax breaks for businesses, but to the benefit of "innovative micro-businesses and SMEs" (and here we are not far off Macron’s call for a “start-up nation”), give the illusion of tax fairness. As for the seemingly bolder measures, they are more of a publicity stunt: what is called the “suspension” of Macron’s pension reform seeks only to revive the “dialogue between social partners” in order to “find sustainable conditions for its financing”. In other words, this means repeating Bayrou’s operation calling for a “conclave” of talks on pensions —  and this was, indeed, the main alibi invoked by the Socialist Party to justify its earlier refusal to censure the Bayrou government. This conclave ended in a well-known fiasco, but it allowed Macronism to gain precious time, with the support of the trade union leaderships. As for the so-called “boost to low wages”, this is supposed to be achieved by reducing the CSG (general social contribution – the tax devoted to the financing of Social Security), i.e. drying up social protection resources, according to a typically neoliberal logic. According to repeated statements by Socialist leaders, reported by Les Echos, “this is not a plan devised by scary leftists”. As Julie Cariat points out in Le Monde, "the Socialist Party’s ‘other vision for France’ already looks like a tool for the post-Bayrou era and its future government negotiations".

Another fundamental point of convergence between Macron’s government and the Socialist Party should also be highlighted: the increase in military budgets, which began during Macron’s first term but has accelerated dramatically since the start of the war in Ukraine. This has been boosted by the EU Commission’s adoption of the ReArm Europe plan, which counts for an €800 billion in spending by 2030. To achieve this, member states are even allowed to deviate from the 3% budget deficit rule, up to 1.5% of their GDP for a period of four years: austerity measures will not affect the military-industrial complex. As for France, the world’s second-largest arms exporter, whose defence industry is pretty much all that remains of significance in an otherwise tattered industrial fabric, the figures are truly staggering: since the start of Macron’s first term, military spending (excluding pensions) has risen from €32 to 50 billion, an increase of more than 55% (and a rise from 1.8% to 2.06% of GDP). This amounts to 80% of the savings provided for in the Socialist Party’s alternative budget. According to the €413 billion military programming law, adopted in July 2023 by all the parties represented in the National Assembly with the exception of France Insoumise and the Communists, which voted against it, and the Greens, who abstained, this annual spending is meant to rise to €68 billion in 2030 (i.e. 2.6% of GDP). However, there is talk of revising this figure upwards to reach a "budgetary weight" of €90 billion and the target of 3% of GDP, as mentioned by Sébastien Lecornu last March. On this issue, there is a real consensus across the Atlanticist camp, from the National Rally to the Greens. After voting for a staggering increase in military budgets, the Socialist Party warmly applauded the ReArm Europe plan, with Faure declaring that he "fully agreed" with the statements made by Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen on European defence . More hesitant and divided on the issue of increasing defence budgets, the Greens nonetheless – by a decision of their Federal Council – warmly applauded the ReArm Europe plan and the idea of joint EU defence and even an EU army. For her part, [Green leader] Marine Tondelier showed that she knew how to use martial language when she called for people to join in (what is called) unanimity behind Macron to confront the Russian threat and defend Ukraine.

So, the lay of the land has changed. “Europe”, we were assured, “means peace”. Now we know that the locking down of neoliberal policies and democratic dispossession is combined with militarisation and warmongering.

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The political conditions for a response

We can now better understand the meaning of calls for “unity”, for a “government [ranging] from Ruffin to Glucksmann”, in the words of the Socialist Party’s main national leader.  This is quite simply a unity based on the exclusion of France Insoumise. Its real aim is not so much a (highly improbable) “united” left-wing candidacy (or even a united candidacy of this part of the left) in 2027, so much as to bury any policy of radical change.

How, then, can we believe in a possible reconstitution of the New Popular Front when one of its components – the second largest in terms of parliamentary group size – has broken this alliance to allow Macronism to cling to power and is asserting its readiness to continue along this path? How can we justify the name “Front populaire 2027”, which was presented at a public meeting in Bagneux in early July and endorsed shortly afterwards by a resolution of the Socialist Party national bureau, when it is based on the exclusion of the force — France Insoumise — that leads the groups elected under the New Popular Front label in the National Assembly?  After both NUPES and the NFP were broken up, what political credibility can be granted to yet another “unitary” electoral patchwork which, as far as the Socialist Party leaders’ approach is concerned, has proved to be a cynical calculation that allowed them to win seats only to change sides immediately afterwards and serve as a crutch for a dying presidency? Alain Bertho rightly called for staying "away from ‘unitary’ initiatives that built up their partial unities and targeted anathemas in the suspended time of presidential strategies”. Nevertheless, the strategic problem facing the left, and particularly the radical left grouped around France Insoumise, is obvious. We should also be clear that no solution currently seems within reach.

This strategic failure raises a fundamental question: what can a "programme of rupture" mean if it does not break with the framework of European pacts and the regime of "enhanced surveillance" by the Brussels Commission? What meaning can the "unitary" claim to a "radical" programme have if it aligns itself with militarisation, Atlanticism and warmongering? It is understandable that last autumn, the NFP parliamentary groups, led by France Insoumise, wanted to educate the public and show that an NFP government was a legitimate possibility, thereby exposing Macron’s denial of democracy. They thus highlighted the vote in the National Assembly on tax amendments that would have brought in €50 or 60 billion, equivalent to the budget cuts planned in Barnier’s budget. The Socialist Party’s "alternative budget" project also takes up some of the proposals for which the left fought in the National Assembly, notably the Zucman tax. This could be described as an "NFP-compatible budget", in the words of Finance Committee Chairman Eric Coquerel, of France Insoumise. But, as was entirely predictable, the tax-revenue side of the budget was overwhelmingly rejected by the National Assembly. The problem with this kind of educational exercise, however, is that by too readily forgetting their limitations, we risk losing sight of the essential point. And that is the impossibility of implementing policies that break with the neoliberal framework within the straitjacket of budgetary orthodoxy and, more broadly, the treaties – to which we must now add the militarisation plans – of which the EU is the promoter and the watchful guardian.

Ultimately, the whole issue boils down to “disobedience” to these treaties. Negotiations for the drafting of the NUPES programme for 2022, had — given the balance of power established on the left during the first round of the presidential election — taken place under the conditions most favourable to the positions for “rupture” favoured by France Insoumise. These talks had shown that the dividing line within the left ran through the issue of the European treaties. The contortions of the final wording of the programme make this clear. The programme thus specified that “while certain European rules are bases to work from, everyone can see today how much others, including important ones, are out of step with the imperatives of the ecological and social emergency and constitute serious obstacles to the implementation of our programme”. The following list is long and covers almost all areas of the programme: free trade agreements, the application of “free and undistorted competition” to public services and common goods, the productivist and agro-industrial model of the Common Agricultural Policy, the statutes of the ECB and the austerity budgetary rules of the "European Semester", and the free movement of capital, which "prevents us from controlling an increasingly aggressive and harmful financial sector". So, what can we do to avoid being locked into this iron cage? One of the most hotly debated formulations of the 2022 NUPES agreement was the statement that “we must be prepared not to respect certain rules [emphasis in the text]. Because of our histories, some of us talk about disobeying, others about temporary derogations, but we are all aiming for the same goal: to be able to fully implement the government’s shared programme and thus fulfil the mandate given to us by the French people”. However, beyond the terminology speaking of "disobedience" or "temporary derogation", the measures actually envisaged are essentially part of an impossible "renegotiation" of the treaties or an even more utopian "European Convention for the revision and rewriting of the European treaties, built with the national parliaments and the European Parliament", the conclusions of which would then be submitted to a referendum at the level of the EU’s various member states. It is easy to imagine the sarcastic responses that such delusional comments would prompt among the EU’s current leaders, if they should ever hear of them. More soberly, the NFP’s programme in 2024 repeated the same kind of acrobatics, on the one hand insisting that it "rejects the fiscal stability pact", while on the other hand drawing up a long list of "plans" and measures ("for social and climate emergencies", "the reindustrialisation of Europe", "ecological and social protectionism at Europe’s borders", taxation of the rich "at the European level to increase the EU budget’s own resources") designed to be achievable only at EU level. In other words, these can only be meaningless incantations. However, this section on "Europe" concludes with a modest commitment that is at least clear: "we will reject, for the implementation of our legislative contract, the fiscal compact, competition law when it undermines public services, and we will reject free trade agreements". This minimal commitment nevertheless proved unacceptable to the Socialist Party. As indicated by its "alternative budget" proposal (and before that, its non-censure agreement with Bayrou), this party was quick to show its willingness to comply with the fiscal compact it had rejected in the NFP programme. It has done so even as the constraints of this compact have been further strengthened.

So, must we resign ourselves to this lack of strategic alternatives? No, because even if it cannot be ignored, the social and political struggle extends beyond the logic of programmes and electoral politics. The solution is to be found nowhere else but in the popular awakening that is expected in the coming weeks. Experience has shown that it is popular mobilisation that is decisive in breaking through situations that appear to have no positive outcome. This is, of course, on condition that this mobilisation is sustained over time and that the appropriate forms are developed to achieve this. The challenge for the emerging movement is to demonstrate both flexibility and inventiveness. The task at hand is to achieve genuine popular self-organisation, to establish a link – which will undoubtedly involve tension and difficulties – between existing and new forms, local or sectoral initiatives and flexible coordination structures.

It is also worth recognising that this process is not starting from scratch, as it builds on the rich experience of the very important movements of recent years. These mobilisations may not have achieved victory, but they have enabled the spread, across broad sectors of society, of a collective intelligence and a will to fight. Creative capacity emerges from the people when they engage in mass action, but it also needs to be fertilised by coherent and structured proposals. Among these, the forces of the radical left, and France Insoumise in particular, have a special responsibility: that of clarifying the political and programmatic conditions for a victorious confrontation with the class adversary. Today, that means a confrontation with the bourgeois bloc, i.e. the Macronite government and its (declared or shamefaced) allies, and with the European Union, which is all the more formidable an expression of this class adversary as it condenses the coalesced forces of all the dominant classes of Europe.

4 September 2025

Translated by David Broder