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Quick news from France: business as usual [1]

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Date: 2025-07-15

On July 7, 2024, France had a snap election that turned that European country into the perfect laboratory for political dynamics in the Trump era.

On July 3, 2025, the US Congress enacted the majority’s will of growing the deficit and impoverishing everyone but the wealthiest. About two weeks later, it is France’s turn to, instead, offer a plan to rein in the deficit back under 3% (RTS Info, France Info, both in French). This also means that the political grace period for France’s current government is about over.

This is the third installment of a saga that started here (Daily Kos) and continued here (Daily Kos) about how to lose to the far-right. Here is a summary:

July 2024, France votes for legislative gridlock. September 2024, the center turns to the right and makes the Barnier government. December 2024, the Barnier government offers its €60bn budget and gets removed. December 2024 (still), the left bails out the center and allows for the Bayrou government. July 2025, the Bayrou government offers its €44bn budget.

To make things clearer, here are some numbers: the French legislative body (Assemblée Nationale) counts 577 seats, with 289 needed for a majority. The far-left (France Insoumise, ~129 seats) and far-right (Rassemblement National, 142 seats) have ~271 of them and they, to no one’s surprise, promise to take down any government for any excuse under the sun. This is why any form of governance without the left (Parti Socialiste; 64 seats) is mathematically impossible. So far, the Bayrou government has survived through legislative paralysis, that is, by doing nothing. That’s now ending.

Let the experiment begin.

It is very simple: you need a budget that is acceptable by both the left and the right (Les Républicains, 66 seats). Lose 18 votes total and your entire government is gone. That means 14% of each fringe is enough to doom you. But that is only the half of it because passing a budget means little if the far-right wins in 2027. And the far-right is poised to win in 2027. If you wonder what that means, let me just say it is big and beautiful.

So, what’s your game plan to accomplish this impossible balance? Here it is:

freeze government spending

reduce the public workforce

remove two public holidays

reduce drug reimbursement

reform the unemployment system

That’s not all of it — the government also wants to close tax loopholes on the wealthy, for example — but it is enough to understand why the left, through Olivier Faure, is describing it as a “demolition plan of our French model”. It should also be enough to incur PTSD for anyone familiar with US politics. Spending freeze? Obama tried it. Public workforce? DOGE anyone? Drug prices? You don’t say. Unemployment? Oh eh, work requirements! Yes, that budget will win the hearts of an understanding and reasonable population. The missing part? Actually raising (or more precisely restoring) taxes on the wealthy.

Now, let’s experiment.

Say this budget loses you +20 votes on the left. Shift the burden, less spending cuts, more tax hikes. Now you are losing +20 votes on the right. There is no majority no matter what and if you think the population itself is not represented in this, neighboring Switzerland also had its austerity debate; a majority of the population plebiscited spending cuts. The budget that will fail is the one people want.

The Bayrou government was doomed before it was formed; the far-right won on July 2024 and, frankly, in 2022 already, when the center-right, despite the clear democratic threat looming, followed the majority’s will and doubled-down on business as usual. And why talk about French politics in the US? Because the dynamics are identical. France, through it’s multiparty system, exposes the undercurrents and describes how it is possible for a far-right minority to win, from legislative paralysis to self-sabotage. That, and that only, is what’s actually happening in the background.

And just as France shows the US how it got there, the US is showing France what awaits it, including how the center-right, even six months into encroaching fascism, is still not reconsidering.

That, is how you elect an incompetent criminal.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/15/2333558/-Quick-news-from-France-business-as-usual?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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