The Centrist Blackmail No Longer Works

https://damagemag.com/2025/09/17/the-centrist-blackmail/



The great demand of centrist politics is fiscal discipline, particularly in managing public debt. With nearly 115% of its GDP in accumulated debt, France is the ugly little duckling of European economies, with only Greece and Italy performing worse. Bayrou attempted to scare MPs into voting for the confidence vote on September 8th, describing the choice they faced as one between utter chaos, or more of the same. But MPs rejected the dichotomy—the organizing metaphor of centrism, which equates the management of state finances to managing a household budget. This is the great subterfuge of centrist economics: that one runs the state as a good paterfamilias, an austere bookkeeper responsible for disciplining his unruly wife and children.

Bayrou had been appointed to pass an austerity budget for 2025 to avoid an American-style government shutdown, which he promptly passed, thanks to the passivity of the Socialists and far Right. The size of the effort? €50 billion. It was an almost perfectly centrist budget, comprising 60% budget cuts borrowed from the Right and 40% additional taxes taken from the Left. The budget failed to improve France's finances, and further sacrifices are needed for 2026—€44 billion, this time. Bayrou promised to ask the richest in France for a contribution to this national effort, but never gave details as to what this meant. We will never know now what Bayrou had in mind to address rising inequalities.

Bayrou had been a Macronist since the beginning, nominated in 2017 to the post of Justice Minister until he had to step down a month later due to a pending investigation into embezzlement of EU funds. To make his comeback to the forefront of the government, Bayrou used the oldest trick in the book last December. When Macron called Bayrou to say he was about to nominate Sébastien Lecornu to the post of Prime Minister, Bayrou threatened to withdraw the support of his 36 MPs if Macron did not nominate him instead. Macron caved and let Bayrou hold the reins, but now, barely a day after Bayrou losing the confidence vote in the National Assembly, Macron has nominated Lecornu. Having blackmailed his way into the position of Prime Minister, Bayrou’s centrism is to be replaced by yet another, with Lecornu being Macron’s closest ally and longest-standing minister. One can expect Lecornu to continue Macronism faithfully, tightening budgets and maintaining austerity.

The arguments against fiscal discipline come from multiple sources, from Modern Monetary Theory in the USA to the économistes attérés [“outraged economists”] in France. These economists argue that a state cannot run out of money, since it controls the supply of money. There are alternative ways to manage large debts than austerity, such as boosting demand through public spending. States, including the French state, have survived much higher debts, proportionally, through a series of policy measures that are open to any government today. Inflation could reduce the size of the debt, partial cancellation (the famous “haircut”) could consolidate some of the debt acquired in times of emergency, and one-off taxes could be used to reimburse parts of the debt. Bayrou’s scare tactics underscore the lack of imagination among the French political class.

snip