Catherine Field: France Correspondent on the Prime Minister being ousted in a vote of no confidence

France has been plunged into a fresh political crisis, with MPs voting to oust the prime minister. 

The BBC reports Francois Bayrou called the surprise vote of confidence on himself after huge opposition to his budget plans. 

France's National Assembly voted by 364 votes to 194 to eject him from office, and bring down his minority government.  

President Emmanuel Macron now faces a choice between calling a snap election or picking a fifth prime minister in less than two years. 

France Correspondent Catherine Field told Mike Hosking that part of the problem was Bayrou’s attitude. 

She says he seemed to antagonise everyone he spoke to, and he didn’t try to negotiate or seek coalitions. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In France. Catherine Field, good morning, Good morning, Mike. I
think that interested me much. I think we all knew
he was going to lose. Is how much he lost by?
Why was he routed that way?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Well? Yeah, time is up for French prime minister who
nine months in office and who would have believed that
he would have such a resounding kicking out of office Mike.
Nearly two thirds of Parliament voted against him. Not only that,
some fifteen MPs from his own party also voted for

(00:30):
him to leave the scene, so pretty extraordinary scenes after
only nine months in office. Part of it, Mike was
his attitude. He antagonized pat By, who seemed to antagonize
everyone he spoke to. He didn't negotiate, he didn't try
and seek coalitions. He sort of stayed within his sort

(00:52):
of fractured right wing block in Parliament and talked among
them themselves. Then when it came to putting a budget
for next year, he just put together a budget and
handed it down and said, this is what we're going
to have. It's going to be what eighty seven billion
New Zealand dollars worth of savings And if you want
to talk to me, you know where I am, so

(01:12):
of course that really did annoy people. The parliamentarians were saying, no,
you know the way that you do this if you've
got a split parliament like this, a minority government, you
come and talk to us before you put the budget down.
So that didn't go down well. And I think there
were two more things that really did wrong a parliamentarians.
One was he said over the summer months he couldn't
get in touch with any of the parliamentarians, any of

(01:34):
the MPs. He said they were all on holiday, so
it was as though mobile phones didn't even exist. The
other thing we're hearing was that he led Emanual Macron,
the president, to believe that he had already talked to
the other political parties about this vote of confidence, and
it seemed that he hadn't. And so Emanual Macron is
going to be meeting Franco Baijou just under twelve hours

(01:57):
time from now, and we'll say, yeah, you've got to
stay on as a caretaker until we get a new
prime minister.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
But you're fired.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
You singly failed to do the job I put you
in there for the country is still in fiscal chaos
and everything will just go on the President's office has
said there will be a new prime minister in the
coming days.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Right deserve you exactly? Does this reflect badly on Macron?
I mean he can't keep picking prime ministers.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Kenny well his alternative, he can keep picking prime ministers. Yeah,
this is only a political crisis, it's not a constitutional crisis.
He could dissolve parliament again, it's been more than a
year since there were parliamentary elections. But if he does
that then his party would do even worse than it
did just over a year ago. You would still not
have a strong central government a parliament there and this

(02:50):
is also the risk that Mahine la penn in the
far right would do better. The latest shows that would
come in with around thirty one percent of the vote,
So that's way ahead of the left block, which we're
coming at twenty three percent. So he's just got to
keep fumbling along.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Interesting how much of the weight of the argument you'll
opens your nationalrallies, which is we're not against what you're
trying to do. It's just like have a look over
there at the waist and we're over there at the waist,
and start tiding up some of the waste that we
see as waste as opposed to what you might see
as waste.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Well, that's exactly it. You've not only got Mahinglapen the
far right saying, hey, listen, you know, don't just cut
government spending, don't just cut healthcare spending. Have a bit
more of a of a finger on the wallet of
the super rich. You get some money from them. And
that's exactly also what the socialists say on the left.

(03:43):
They're saying, you know, let's have a rich text. The
ultra rich should be taxed more. The the other thing
is essentially Macrome. He's got what two years, not even
two years after an office. He's a lame duck when
it comes to to the domestic politics anyway, and no
one likes his opinion. Pole ratings are really low. At
the best he can sort of scuffer together eighteen percent

(04:05):
approval ratings, so no one wants him to succeed. So
all he can do is try and find another prime minister.
And as they're saying here, you know, just in the
last couple of minutes, the joke granders are next. Please
who wants it next?

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Well, that's the thing, isn't it. I mean you need
to find i suppose Barneo was like that, you know'd
been doing our the work. He's probably sitting there having
a good time, and he said, do you want to
do me your favor and run the place for a
while and see me you get some numbers through the house.
You need to find somebody who's going to look. I'll
give it a crack, but I mean, who wants that job?

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, this is also the problem when you've got presidential
elections coming up in just under two years time. No
one wants to have their copybook blotted by having ruined
the economy of being behind a widespread process that break out,
which is expected that there will be protests the next
couple of weeks. There's almost someone somewhere some of the
names that have been dreamt up, you know, politicians have

(04:56):
retired and they can bring them back to sort of
mind the shop just so steady the ship. And I
think that is actually what Macron does want. And if anything,
that was what fast our Biery managed to do. They
could have stabilize it for a while domestically, which allowed
Macron to go and do what he does on the
international scene, which French people do like all.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Right, Catherine good to catch up with you, so you assume.
Catherine Field in France for US this morning. For more
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