New French Prime Minister Resigns, Deepening France’s Political Crisis 

France’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu resigned Monday, less than a month since he was appointed, deepening the country’s political crisis, Le Monde reported. 

Lecornu, who has had the shortest term as prime minister in modern French history, resigned just hours after he presented his new cabinet.  

“You can’t be prime minister when the conditions simply aren’t there,” Lecornu said. “Political parties keep acting as if each of them held a majority in the National Assembly.” 

In an effort to diffuse a deepening political crisis and to pass an austerity budget for next year, French President Emmanuel Macron in September picked Lecornu, a former defense minister and a close ally, for the job. 

However, Lecornu failed to unite the deeply divided French parliament to approve the budget – a task his immediate predecessors, François Bayrou and Michel Barnier, also failed to do, CNBC News added.  

The divisions in parliament arose from snap elections called by Macron last summer in an effort to strengthen his mandate, a move that backfired after no party won a majority, which left the legislature fractured between three rival blocs. 

Previous governments pushed the last three budgets through parliament without a vote, a procedure allowed by the constitution but strongly criticized by the opposition. 

Even though Lecornu promised lawmakers they were going to be able to vote on the new budget bill, leftist and far-right parties said they would back a no-confidence vote. 

Now, after five prime ministers in less than two years – none able to build a stable majority – the country is at an impasse, say analysts. So far, Macron has resisted the numerous calls to call new legislative elections and has ruled out stepping down himself before the end of his mandate in 2027.  

However, public frustration over austerity measures and a government seen as arrogant and detached from everyday realities has only deepened, spilling into the streets.  

On Thursday, tens of thousands of people across France took to the streets in massive strikes and protests against the austerity budgets and public spending cuts, calling for tax hikes on the rich. Demonstrators clashed with police, who fired tear gas on the crowd and arrested about 140 people nationwide, Al Jazeera noted.