Editorial. Michel Barnier’s government: the blunders continue one after the other

After a call to Marine Le Pen, Michel Barnier also had to make an apology phone call to David Lisnard on Wednesday, following the comments made by the Minister for Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, on the floods in Cannes.

Barely four days of existence and the blunders continue to come thick and fast within the government. On Wednesday, September 25, it was the LR mayor of Cannes David Lisnard who received an apology phone call from Michel Barnier. He wanted to correct the remarks of his Minister of Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, who had seemed to minimize the impact of the floods on Monday in Cannes by pointing out the waterproofing of the soil which prevents the flow of rain while, “50 mm of water is not Niagara Falls either,” she said.

The day before, Michel Barnier had made an act of contrition to Marine Le Pen to deny his Minister of the Economy Antoine Armand, who had excluded the RN from the “republican arc”. He is no longer a Prime Minister, he is a flying firefighter. Michel Barnier is the Red Adair of the government who spends his time putting out the fires started by his ministers.

If there are so many false notes, it is because it is not an orchestra, not even a team. It is a pile-up, hastily cobbled together, the addition of parties that are only in agreement to share power. In fact, this government is not a coalition. Building a coalition, as our German neighbors do, for example, requires that the head of government negotiates for weeks or even months with the parties to establish a common program. If he had been approached at the beginning of the summer, Michel Barnier could have started consulting, why not while the resigning government of Gabriel Attal was acting as interim. But Emmanuel Macron lost two months. As a result, to convince the parties to join him, Michel Barnier was content with commitments as vague as that of“improve the standard of living of the French and the functioning of public services” or even of “guarantee security”. In short, there is no precise roadmap.

This is the whole point of Friday’s seminar, followed by Tuesday’s general policy speech. It is urgent. On immigration and the fate of state medical aid, the return of minimum sentences, tax increases, the end of life soon, and many other issues, we can already see many fundamental disagreements emerging within the government. And we can tell that Michel Barnier has probably not finished making phone calls.