France has been left ‘on the brink of the abyss’ staring down an economic crisis and continued political floundering after far-right and leftist lawmakers voted to topple the government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier yesterday.

The sensational no-confidence motion means Barnier – the former Brexit negotiator for the EU – will become the shortest-serving prime minister in modern French history when he hands in his resignation this week.

He was ousted by lawmakers from Marine Le Pen‘s hard-right National Rally party and members of France’s leftist coalition, who came together in an unholy alliance to pass a vote of no-confidence with 331 out of 574 votes – well over the 288 needed. The vote prompted French President Emmanuel Macron, who has faced widespread calls to resign amid the chaos, to hold an emergency meeting with his inner circle in which he reportedly lambasted the left coalition for pushing Barnier out.

Macron railed against the Socialist Party (PS) in particular for ‘inventing an anti-Republican front’, castigating the left as ‘a coalition of the irresponsible that will have to assume responsibility for this before the French people’.

Barnier was ousted after trying to achieve the impossible – to put together a budget to address the spiralling national debt while also keeping all three quarrelling political blocs in France’s hung Parliament happy at the same time.

Having failed to make headway in the National Assembly, Barnier used an article of the French Constitution to force through a social security financing bill as part of a budget proposing 60 billion euro-tax hikes and spending cuts – a move that led the hard right and left to rise up against him.

Both sides spouted rhetoric that Barnier’s proposed budget would damage and harm the French people – even while the deficit soars unchecked.

His ousting was summed up by veteran French journalist Eric Brunet who told BFMTV: ‘What we have just seen is jaw-droppingly French.

‘No pragmatism. Just ideology. Our whole discourse is disconnected from reality. It is typically, singularly French.’

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