Signs of trouble for Macron over pension reform

Left-wing MPS hold placards and sing the Marseillaise, as Elisabeth Borne, the French prime minister, arrives to give a speech on the pension reform bill at the National Assembly in Paris. Emmanuel Macron was warned that France is on the verge of a ‘democratic breakdown’ over the policy

Mr Macron’s critics have branded him an elitist leader and he has given them more ammunition

Emmanuel Macron has never looked weaker after using presidential powers to strongarm through his unpopular pension reforms.

The French president took the nuclear option of triggering a constitutional clause allowing him to bypass a parliamentary vote on the changes, which include raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Mr Macron would never dream of such nakedly anti-democratic tactics if he thought his unpopular reforms stood any chance of passing in the National Assembly.

He is left facing likely motions of no confidence, which could force his prime minister and close ally Élisabeth Borne and her government to resign.

Mr Macron’s critics have always branded him an elitist “president of the rich” and he has handed them yet more ammunition with his dodging of democracy.

The snubbing of the Assembly is also bound to spark a fresh wave of protests across France, which has already been racked by discord over the reforms.

It is a far cry from the presidential elections in April last year, when Mr Macron handily defeated Marine Le Pen to win a rare second term as president.

The reforms were, it is thought, the sole promise of a re-election campaign that was largely based on accusing Ms Le Pen of pursuing an economically damaging Frexit by stealth.

Mr Macron vowed to unify the polarised country after the vote but those dreams were left in tatters after he lost his absolute majority in the National Assembly just two months later.

Now his defeated presidential rivals on the hard-right and hard-left – Ms Le Pen and Jean-luc Melanchon – are well-placed to extract their revenge.

Ms Borne, who persuaded Mr Macron to attempt to rally conservatives behind the laws with concessions, is expected to take the fall for the fiasco.

But Mr Macron’s fingerprints are all over the laws, which risk public unrest on a par with the Yellow Vest protests and were, according to Ms Le Pen, his sole campaign promise. The president will not resign, but he will be left a lame duck. His chances of passing even unambitious reforms for the rest of his five-year mandate have taken a serious blow.

Mr Macron shocked the world when he won his first presidential election in 2017. He was able to dominate French politics with an absolute Assembly majority after claiming the centre and radicalising the Right and Left.

He is not the type of politician suited to the messy compromise of cross-party consensus building needed to run a country with a minority.

In his early days as president, Mr Macron styled himself as a “Jupiterian president”, with an aloof, almost imperial ruling style.

Rather than ruling from the heavens with the authority of a Roman god, Mr Macron’s high-handed gamble screams weakness.