The president will not resign but he will be left a lame duck.

Ms Borne, who persuaded Mr Macron to attempt to rally conservatives behind the laws with concessions, is expected to take the fall for the fiasco.īut Mr Macron’s fingerprints are all over the laws, which risk public unrest on a par with the Yellow Vest protests and were, according to Ms Le Pen, his sole campaign promise. Now his defeated presidential rivals on the hard-Right and hard-Left - Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melanchon - are well-placed to extract their revenge. Mr Macron vowed to unify the polarised country after the vote but those dreams were left in tatters after he lost his absolute majority in the National Assembly just two months later. The reforms were the sole promise of a re-election campaign that was largely based on accusing Ms Le Pen of pursuing an economically damaging Frexit by stealth. It is a far cry from the presidential elections in April last year, when Mr Macron handily defeated Marine Le Pen to win a rare second term as president. The snubbing of the Assembly is also bound to spark a fresh wave of protests across France, which has already been racked by discord over the reforms. Mr Macron’s critics have always branded him an elitist “president of the rich” and he has handed them yet more ammunition with his dodging of democracy. He is left facing likely motions of no confidence, which could force his prime minister and close ally Élisabeth Borne and her government to resign. Mr Macron would never dream of such nakedly anti-democratic tactics, if he thought his unpopular reforms stood any chance of passing in the National Assembly. The French president took the nuclear option of triggering a constitutional clause allowing him to bypass a parliamentary vote on the changes, which include raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Emmanuel Macron has never looked weaker after using presidential powers to strong-arm through his unpopular pension reforms.

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