Je t'aime, moi non plus.

Love me, love me not. French politics in turmoil.

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Finally, more than sixty days after the second round of the parliamentary elections, French President Emmanuel Macron has been named Prime Minister. After only eight months, he has replaced the Fifth Republic's youngest Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, with the oldest ever Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, ex-European Commissioner and EU Brexit negotiator, amongst other things.

During the formal handing over of power ceremony yesterday evening at Matignon, the official residence of the French Prime Minister, Attal broke all conventions and spoke for an unusually long time., over twenty minutes, where he declared that eight months was too short, and then he proceeded to present a detailed political program of government - as if he were the incoming PM and not the outgoing one. He clearly has set his sights on playing an ever bigger role in the near future in the fractured French political landscape. When he finally had the opportunity to speak, Barnier ironically started off by saying, "Thank you for letting me get a word in edgeways", before going on to promise fundamental change and a break with the past, mentioning that the time was for action and not talking.

One must remember that once upon a time, Barnier was the youngest MP ever elected to the French parliament, and he has a long political career under his belt. He will need all the experience he has to survive in what some are considering to be an almost Tom Cruise-like mission impossible.

As President under the French Constitution, Macron is the "king of the castle". He has substantial powers, including naming not only the Prime Minister but also all future government ministers "upon recommendation of the Prime Minister". Macron had the added advantage of determining the timing of the nomination, which was entirely up to him. He waited until the Olympics were over before consulting far and wide, talking to the leaders of all the political parties, from the far-left "Unbowed" ("La France Insoumise" to the far-right National Rally ("Rassemblement National").

The parliamentary elections did not result in any one clear party or coalition obtaining a clear majority. Although the "New National Front" alliance of the leading left-wing parties (the Unbowed, the Ecologists, the Communists and the Ecologists) won the most seats, 180, they were followed close behind by the President's alliance, Ensemble, with 163, the National Rally and affiliated parties in third place with 143 seats, and the Republicans (traditional right-wing) in fourth place with 66 seats. The absolute majority of the 577-seat Parliament is 289.

The main issue of the elections was whether the French people were to give the far-right party, the NR, the keys to power for the first time since the Second World War. Faced with such a seismic change, the electorate decided not to do so, and the vast majority of political parties agreed to work together in a so-called Republican Front to prevent the RN from achieving the required number of seats to form an absolute majority by withdrawing their candidates in favour of the candidate best placed to beat the RN candidate on a constituency by constituency basis.

The Republican Front was more successful than initially thought possible, so much so that the far right was relegated to third place with only 143 seats, far less than the 289 required to form a majority.

Herein lies the fundamental problem of the election. The Far-left alliance did, in fact, win the most number of seats, albeit with only a small advantage over the second-placed alliance. Their success was based predominantly on the desire of the electorate to block the far-right from achieving a majority and was not a clear indication of the support of their far-left political program. Many people who voted for the remaining New National Front candidate did so to prevent the RN candidate from winning, in some cases proverbially "holding their noses" as they were, in fact, right-wing or centrist voters.

However, immediately after the polls closed, the leader of the Unbowed Party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, took to the airwaves to declare an unconditional victory of the left, stating that the only option for the country was the swift nomination of a left-wing Prime Minister from the Unbowed Party to implement "the whole program of the New Political Front, and only the program of the New National Front." Considering that the program in question is very much a left-wing program strongly tilted toward the far-left as opposed to the centre-left, with, for example, the promise to repeal the most significant legislative achievement of the previous government, the reform of the pension system, which notably increased the age of retirement progressively from 62 to 64. Mélenchon took his alliance partners by surprise, and as a result, it took the New National Front more than two weeks to settle on the name of a future Prime Minister from their ranks, finally settling on Lucie Castets, a French civil servant acceptable to all the coalition partners.

Following the above-described principle of a "take it, or leave it" style program, Castes refused to compromise with the centrist Ensemble party and insisted that the only acceptable program was the one presented by the New National Front, which included the reversal of the pension reform law, the introduction of higher taxes for the more wealthy citizens, and the increase of minimum salaries and social contributions.

This intransigence and lack of willingness to reach a compromise with other parties despite not having anywhere close to the number of seats required to form a stable majority was put to the test during the election of the President of the National Assembly on July 18th. The favoured candidate of the New National Front was the communist André Chassaigne. In the third and final round, he was beaten by the Macron-supported candidate, the outgoing President, Yaël Braun-Pivet, who was re-elected with 220 votes (to 207 votes for Chassaigne). This was the first clear indication of the new balance of power within the new parliament.

Undeterred by their failure to capture the Presidency of the National Assembly, the New National Front continued with its strategy of no compromise. Melenchon, somewhat impulsively, to the dismay of his coalition partners, threatened President Macron with a motion of impeachment if he did not accept Castes as Prime Minister.

During the consultations with the various political parties, Macron declared his main objective to name a Prime Minister capable of reuniting under his or her name the broadest possible support from all the Republican parties to ensure a stable government going forward. Three options were on the table: the nomination of a moderate left-wing Prime Minister (the previous Socialist Prime Minister under President François Hollande, Bernard Cazeneuve was one such candidate), the nomination of a so-called "technician", i.e. an individual not marked politically (the President of the Economic and Social Council, Thierry Beaudet) and finally a candidate issued from the right.

At the end of the day, Macron chose the third option, naming Michel Barnier Prime Minister on September fifth as this seemed to be the only viable path forward.

Ooh la la, Mission Impossible ?

Immediately thereafter, Melenchon and his allies declared that Macron had stolen the election and that it was anti-democratic to name a Prime Minister from the party that had only come in fourth place in the elections. In a typical dramatic Gallic manner, Melenchon has called for street demonstrations to oppose the nomination of Barnier, not accepting that the stubbornness and intransigence of his coalition was at the heart of the political conundrum.

It remains to be seen if Barnier can gain enough support in parliament to withstand any move to censure him and overthrow his government before it even gets started. Many on the left fear that Barnier will be held hostage by the far-right and that nothing will be done without the support of the National Rally, who will demand, in return for not voting against the new government, the implementation of even more stringent anti-immigration laws.

The next step in this tortured process will be the denomination of the governmental ministers and, notably, the key ministers of the State. It will be the first indication of how broad the new governing coalition will be, and it remains to be seen if any politicians from the left will accept to be part of the new government. Officially, all four parties of the New National Front have declared that nobody from their ranks will assume a position in the new government. But we will see if this will be the case, as the lure of a ministerial positional can sometimes prove too strong to resist.

The second consideration will be the official program of the new government that Barnier will present before Parliament, and that will have to be accepted by the Parliament for the government to survive.

Last but not least, the relationship between President Macron and Barnier will be key. In the past, the notion of "cohabitation" was used to describe a President and a Prime Minister from different political parties with opposing views. Macron prefers to refer to a period of "coexistence". All bets are on who will have the upper hand, with some pundits even going so far as to predict that Macron will not be able to govern for the rest of his term, which officially ends in spring 2027 and that he will be forced to resign. This may, however, be more wishful thinking than a real possibility. In any event, Barnier will know that his work has been cut out for him and that Macron will not be able to call for new parliamentary elections before June 30 of next year, but underestimating Macron is a mistake he cannot afford to make.