John Keiger: Emmanuel Macron has made France ungovernable

France now has a tripartite lower chamber where all groupings, NPF, Macronists and National ­Rally (RN), are a country mile from the 289 outright majority.

For a political system which for 66 years has had no culture of compromise, forming a durable, European-style rainbow coalition will be painful, and may test the regime to destruction.

When Charles de Gaulle designed and built the Fifth Republic, it was to put an end to the chronic instability of the Fourth, which in the space of 12 years got through 22 governments.

For de Gaulle, the culprit was too much legislative and not enough executive. That is why the Fifth Republic is an astute blend of British parliamentarianism and American presidentialism.

It produced stable governing majorities until Emmanuel Macron dynamited the major parties in 2017 by creating his extreme centre. Convinced that France had attained centrist nirvana, he paid little heed to the radical fringes. Now they have engulfed his world.

A three-way hung parliament is potentially ungovernable. What it signals is that the National Assembly becomes the focus of politics. These elections have de-presidentialised the Fifth Republic.

Just desserts, perhaps. But who will govern and how? A minority NPF government could attempt to govern by pushing through some reforms by decree. However, legislation would always be at the mercy of a censure motion. That leaves building a baroque structure that excludes the RN and the extreme left fringe of the NPF and working with the Macronists whom the NPF detest.

This takes the political system down the route of the old Fourth Republic: backroom deals, lurking no-confidence motions and a frustrated electorate. And to boot, the constitution does not allow another dissolution for a whole year. Can France limp on in this state, haemorrhaging financially and hoping against hope that no new crisis sweeps away the institutions of the Fifth Republic itself?

Perhaps the Fifth Republic has outlived its original efficacy. Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the NPF’s main party, France Unbowed, has been calling for a Sixth Republic for years. For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, a serious constitutional wind of change is blowing. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2024)