Macron under pressure to call parliamentary elections after French PM quits

Sebastien Lecornu's resignation has come kind of completely out of the blue - and there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason for it.

Less than 24 hours earlier, the French prime minister tweeted he had successfully formed a new government and spoke about the challenges facing that government to pass a much-needed budget, something his predecessors failed to do. Now, early on Monday morning, his resignation was handed down and accepted by Emmanuel Macron, leaving the president in a real crisis because he is going through prime ministers, very quickly, too quickly, really, for his position to remain stable for much longer.

You will now get some very strong calls, and they are becoming quite credible calls, from Marine Le Pen's party National Rally, to hold parliamentary elections. They think that if parliamentary elections were held, then they would do very well in them, and all of the polls suggest that would be the case.

And I think you will also find they have sympathy for that position from the socialists and those on the far left as well. So Macron is now going to be under immense pressure to call parliamentary elections.

I think he will also come under pressure to stand down himself, because every time he appoints a new prime minister, it fails. It seems as though he is running out of room and time to keep that tactic, because it is a tactic that is not working for him.

Although Lecornu claimed on Sunday evening to have successfully appointed a new government, there was little new about it. Lecornu himself is a Macron loyalist and the only minister to have served in all of his governments.

Most of the ministers he appointed were the same old characters from the previous government, but it was the appointment of Bruno Le Maire to armed forces minister in particular that caused anger. Le Maire spent seven years as France's economy minister and is blamed by many for the predicament the country is now in.

Read more:Who are the seven PMs who have served under Macron?France has become Europe's problem child - and it could get worse The left and right, who at the very least wanted a symbolic change from the past, withdrew support before the newly announced government was even a day old. The result - Lecornu, appointed only 27 days ago, has become the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the Fifth Republic.

It's an ignominious record that Michel Barnier, who served just three months in 2024, will no doubt be happy to relinquish..