The new French government of prime minister Sébastien Lecornu survived two votes of no confidence on Thursday – one of them narrowly – concluding five days of political drama that has afforded President Emmanuel Macron’s camp temporary respite while opening bitter infighting within both the leftwing coalition and its conservative rivals.
A no-confidence motion tabled in the hung parliament by the far-right Rassemblement National party (RN) predictably garnered only 144 votes, mostly limited to the party’s own members, out of the 289 needed in order to topple the minority centre-right government. But another tabled by the radical-left La France Insoumise party (LFI) drew support from the Greens, the communists, a large portion of the far-right and some rebel conservatives and socialists, making a total of 271 – just 18 votes short of succeeding.
Key to the government’s survival was the decision earlier this week by the Parti Socialiste (PS) instructing its Members of Parliament (MPs) not to vote down the government after Lecornu announced on Tuesday the suspension of the 2023 reform of the state pension scheme up until the 2027 presidential elections. This in effect immediately freezes what was an incremental rise in the age of retirement on full pension rights from 62 to 64.
A withdrawal or suspension of the unpopular 2023 legislation, one of Macron’s major reforms, was a pre-condition set down by the PS to Lecornu for abstaining from the no-confidence vote, without which his government – the second in one week – was doomed.
Another condition, also met by Lecornu, was a pledge by him not to use the controversial 49-3 decree, a parliamentary tool allowed by the constitution to governments to adopt legislation without it being submitted to a vote by MPs, which is how the pension reform legislation was adopted.
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The conservative Les Républicains party also gave the order to its MPs to abstain from the vote on Thursday, and which was largely followed.
Had the vote of no confidence succeeded, it would in all probability led to a dissolution of the hung parliament that has paralysed three successive governments since Macron called snap legislative elections in the summer of 2024.
Confident that public frustration at the antics of the political establishment has significantly increased its potential electoral support, the far-right RN, the largest single party in parliament where it is led by Marine Le Pen, has been actively urging a dissolution. Other parties however fear such a move, first among them Macron’s Renaissance party, amid the likelihood of an electoral rout.
Lecornu, 39, a close and faithful ally of Macron’s, will now be walking a tightrope through the autumn amid debating of his draft 2026 budget legislation – a budget that has been recurrently delayed by the political crisis which has led to the resignations of three prime ministers, including Lecornu who Macron reappointed on October 10th.
Radical-left MP Aurélie Trouvé, whose LFI party tabled the most successful of the two no-confidence motions, attempted to rally socialist rebels to her cause on Thursday morning. “The announced suspension [of the pension reforms] is simply a snare, a deception, a subterfuge,” she said, addressing the largely deserted socialist benches of the National Assembly, before attacking the “wrecking” draft budget proposals which she claimed are aimed at amputating “all the budgets that create unity” in France.
Speaking in turn before the Assembly, socialist MP Laurent Baumel defended his party’s decision not to vote down the government, arguing that “the non-censuring today is obviously in no way a pact of [future] non-censure”, which was met by shouts of “Mercenaries” from the RN benches, and angry reactions from the few LFI members who had stayed to listen to him.
In the end, seven PS members defied the party line and voted for the LFI motion, including several from France’s overseas territories. On the opposite, several MPs from the Green party (Les Écologistes) and fewer still from the Parti Communiste abstained.
The line taken by the socialists has opened a split among the parties that make up the Nouveau Front Populaire leftwing alliance, created for the snap parliamentary elections last year and which was returned as the largest parliamentary group, and which includes Les Écologistes.
“This whole episode feeds those who want to see two irreconcilable sections of the Left and who place the PS on trial for treachery,” commented MP Clémentine Autain, once a high-profile figure within the LFI, and who now sits with the small leftwing party L’Après. She added that as a result of its position this week, the PS had “isolated itself” from its leftwing and Green partners. However, she said she believed the threat of a far-right victory in presidential elections due in 2027 would bring the Left back together.
While the abstention of the PS has also caused a degree of unease within the party itself, there were also signs of divisions within Les Écologistes, France’s principal Green party, over its decision to vote for the motion of no confidence. One of the party’s cadres, speaking off the record, commented that its MPs “knew the censure wouldn’t pass, that’s why they chose to push the button, but at heart they know very well that it’s a stupidity”. He referred to the comments critical of the party’s line posted on its Facebook page.
Meanwhile, Fabien Roussel, leader of the Parti Communiste, nuanced its support of the motion of no confidence by describing the freezing of the pension reforms, obtained by the socialists, as “a first victory for 500,000 employees”.
For the far-right RN, its support of the LFI motion (the radical-left lent no support to that of the RN) demonstrated a significant change of strategy for the party. It has repeatedly refused to support previous no-confidence votes against the Macron-approved minority governments of Michel Barnier (September-December 2024) and François Bayrou (December 2024-September 2025), preferring to negotiate compromises with which to promote its newly forged image of being a ‘respectable’ political player. LFI party cadre Manuel Bompard reminded the RN of this on Thursday, shouting repeatedly “Nine times” at the far-right benches in a reference to the nine occasions the RN abstained from voting the motions.
On October 8th, as Macron sought a possible replacement for Sébastien Lecornu after his resignation 48 hours earlier, Marine Le Pen, the RN figurehead and leader of its parliamentary group, declared: “Stop, I’m censuring everything. The joke has run its course.” On Thursday, she attacked Lecornu’s budget proposals as the “ultimate act of a political system that has run out of breath and ideas”, before attacking the socialists and the conservative LR party for not joining in the opportunity to bring down the government.
Following Lecornu’s presentation on Tuesday of his policy programme, there were numerous calls within LR for the party to vote no confidence in the government, although the order from Laurent Wauquiez, leader of its parliamentary group, to abstain was followed by almost all its MPs; one voted in favour of the LFI motion, while three others voted for that of the RN.
All eyes are now on the budget debates that will begin next week, and which Lecornu must transform into concrete legislation by the end of the year.
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- This article is based on an original report in French which can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse