Since the announcement of a vote of confidence on September 8th, Prime Minister François Bayrou has been racing against time to convince MPs—and, beyond that, the French opinion—to support him. He plans to meet with leaders of the various parties and is making numerous public appearances in an attempt to defend the legitimacy of his approach.
On Wednesday, August 27th, the prime minister was invited to appear on TF1’s television news programme, following Rassemblement National (RN) president Jordan Bardella. During the interview, he unexpectedly attacked the ‘boomer’ generation—those born during the baby boom in the years following the war—pointing to their responsibility for France’s excessive debt:
If we create chaos, who will be the victims? The first will be the youngest French people, who will have to pay off the debt for the rest of their lives, and we have managed to convince them that it needs to be increased, all for the comfort of certain political parties and for the comfort of the boomers, as they say, who, from this point of view, consider that, well, everything is fine.
This remark came as a surprise and was widely commented on. With these words, Bayrou seems to have unexpectedly adopted the discourse of the ‘Nicolas’ who believe that they are financing a system that mainly benefits the previous generation, caricatured under the first names ‘Bernard and Chantal,’ and held responsible for the current state of disrepair of the country.
However, these “boomers” are precisely Emmanuel Macron’s electoral base: 70% of pensioners voted for him in 2022.
The prime minister defended himself against any accusations of excess, arguing that “lucidity” should be “the first virtue of a nation.” Many French people share his resentment towards the ‘boomers’ on two levels. Under the pay-as-you-go system, they now receive pensions that their descendants will probably never have, and they have voted for decades for a political class responsible for the ills afflicting France today—state mismanagement and rampant immigration and crime.
The prime minister’s energetic argument can be explained by his near certainty, at this stage, that he will fail to gather a majority of MPs to support him on September 8th. He therefore believes he has nothing left to lose and hopes, for the sake of history, to garner some sympathy for his last-minute political courage. This ordeal “will be in the history books,” François Bayrou said on TF1 on Wednesday evening—prompting some members of the government to accuse him of a “sin of pride.”
“Everything can change in the next eleven days, provided we commit ourselves and are not afraid of anything,” he insisted again on Thursday, August 28th, speaking at the autumn meeting of the MEDEF, the French employers’ union.
In the few days remaining before the fateful vote, Bayrou announced his intention to meet with the leaders of the various political parties and parliamentary groups. The La France Insoumise (LFI) party has already declined the invitation, refusing to participate in the prime minister’s “rescue operation.” The Greens have done the same, seeing “no point” in such a meeting. The RN will be there but considers that it is “too late.”
Bayrou’s last stand, despite all the energy he is putting into it, is likely to have no effect. The country is too divided for the French to appreciate his belated lucidity.
