Political Polarization Topples the French Government: A Call to Accept the Gray
On September 8th, the French Prime Minister, Francois Bayrou, was ousted, collapsing the French government. The Guardian reports that due to rising tensions concerning the 2026 French budget, Bayrou called for this motion himself, hoping to receive a signal of support from his parliament. Instead, he was answered with 364 votes of no confidence to 194 votes of support, requiring him to submit his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron. Bayrou's failure requires Macron to appoint his fifth PM in the last two years — signally an overall dismal second term for Macron, states the BBC.
As reported in The Guardian and NBC News, Bayrou began losing support from his parliament after pushing a radical budget—including the dissolution of two national holidays—in an effort to minimize the country’s 44 billion Euro (+51 billion USD) national debt. It wasn’t purely the love of Easter Monday that caused the toppling of the government; their issues began much earlier than that. Bayrou was appointed by Macron after former PM, Michel Barnie, was also ousted with a vote of no confidence, according to NBC News. Bayrou and Barnie were both members of Macron’s minority moderate party, one that has struggled to maintain support in parliament. In fact, maintaining support in the parliament during Macron’s term is seemingly impossible. A majority party in the parliament hasn’t existed since Macron called for a snap election in June of 2024, reported on by AP News. He called for the dissolution of parliament and new elections in the middle of the term with the goal of snatching more seats for his moderate party. To Macron’s disappointment, the far-right and far-left parties won an overwhelming majority of the seats, leaving France with an ever more divided country, states NBC News. Macron’s second term is quickly becoming shorthand for an era of political polarization.
This tune of division is not unfamiliar to people outside of France, with polarization and political vitriol on the rise around the globe. When presented with a culture that stakes its identity so starkly around politics, the implications and causes must be evaluated. Why is it that the parties we once viewed as malleable vectors for our own beliefs are being transformed into stagnant dictionaries by which we define ourselves? The rise of the us/them mentality is a mechanism we employ to cope with an ever changing world. In our current state of rapid expansion (technology, global connectedness, information, etc.), the identities we once knew are beginning to come apart at the seams. We are being forced to either accept the diversity within ourselves, or grasp for a new stable identity, often in the form of a polarized political party.
Our world is one of binaries: left or right, new or old, right or wrong, us or them. As children we were fed on the black and white, and taught to fear the gray. In the gray things are complicated, we are asked to question, forced to accept confusion, and implored to love multiplicity. Knowledge in a binary is simple, making it perfect to dominate our society. As people, we do a decent job of ignoring this dualism when the world is calm. On steady seas we are more likely to sail into that aforementioned gray.
But as the storms begin, we rush to what we know — and quite frankly, the skies are darkening. The climate crisis, Covid-19, the prevalence of AI, and more are impacting the world in unprecedented amounts. In the midst of the complicated issues we are faced with a question: do you cling to the life-rafts of black and white or do you wade into that gray?
This issue is reflected in French politics, as political loyalty and extremism weaken the strength of their government. Parliamentarians will refuse to budge on issues like the budget, while vindicating their stubbornness by believing the absolute evil of the “other”. This is most visible as French citizens are migrating outward, to the far-left and far-right, but is as equally present in the cemented center. In a time when defining your personal identity and political beliefs seems impossible, people instead choose to define what they are not. They create a monolith of antithesis; one of corruption, evil, and disaster. They craft an idea that is so starkly not them, that they are better able to understand who they might be. This construction of an “other” then gets applied to ones’ political opposite, regardless of the commonalities their beliefs truthfully contain. Due to the complex issues at hand, having an answer to what is right and wrong seems impossible. To avoid accepting gray, we create a duality that doesn’t exist. A right and wrong, black and white, far-left and far-right; a substitute for the dualism we were raised on.
As we look to the future of France, it’s simple to hope for the return of the peace guaranteed under a majority party. Issues may not stagnate in parliament, budgets may pass without the toppling of whole governments, but we will have conceded the fight against our binary. When we choose the easy answer of polarization we abandon the hope for a world that accepts its multifariousness. Instead of vying for a majority party to someday rule again, we should hope for a France that accepts the impossible challenge of identifying its beliefs on our world’s most complex issues; one that abandons the black and white for the veracity of the gray.