SUnder a low and heavy sky, the French press had begun to believe it. “Get us that star”begged The Parisian, Sunday, December 18. “For History”completed The Sunday Journal. A few hours later, the Blues, in bad shape, conceded in Qatar two Argentine goals before undertaking a spectacular comeback, to finally lose on penalties the final of the Football World Cup for which they had managed to qualify. for the second time in a row. Bluffed and unhappy, the French could return to cultivate their depression.
It is an understatement to say that at the end of 2022 the country is brooding. The objective reasons are not lacking: the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, the return of inflation, the slowdown in growth give the feeling of a world that is collapsing. The dilapidation of public services (school, hospital, transport), which once made the reputation of the French model, adds to the trouble. What is less normal is the role played by the political configuration of the moment: far from relieving the ambient pessimism, it fully participates in it without anyone being able to help it.
Six months after his accession, the cohabitation between a President of the Republic who managed to get re-elected in April and the opposition which deprived him of an absolute majority two months later in the National Assembly is proving to be deleterious.
The deputies emerge exhausted and frustrated from a sequence riddled with amendments, invectives and night sessions; the Palais-Bourbon, which has become the scene of a permanent and not always dignified confrontation, is struggling to restore its image; the government is wasting its time responding to motions of censure that do not succeed. Withdrawn into their own difficulties, the French are struggling to understand who scores the point.
Saturday December 17, after having engaged for the tenth time the responsibility of the government on a financial text, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, concealing her annoyance badly, expressed her frustration that no compromise could be drawn around the project of budget for 2023, despite the hand she claimed to have extended. All the components of the left had just fired their arrows criticizing a government that “tramples the national representation”.
Frustration
When the majority fact at work for sixty years meets the will of minority parliamentary groups to impose their own line, this gives rise to a political game that is not blocked but completely counter-intuitive: the essential work of the oppositions consists in demolishing what is undertaken, while the main challenge for the government is not to completely lose the line. On this account, the trickiest thing for the Borne government was to succeed in getting the unemployment insurance reform passed, which was done without too much difficulty.
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