“We’ll carry on deepening the deficit, nothing will happen and the situation will just get worse,” he said.
But French opposition parties would be wrong to think they can cycle through new prime ministers, fresh elections and even an early presidential election without swallowing the bitter medicine that Macron’s successive governments have tried to administer, Chaney said.
“If people start thinking it’s not so bad, we can live with deficits, we are heading toward a full-blown crisis,” he said. “Germany will start thinking that France is a serious problem and the ECB [European Central Bank] will not be able to help the French government manage its debt.”
Germany, Chaney says, could set conditions on any help the ECB gives France.
But even if Berlin were able to strong-arm the French political establishment, would France follow suit? If the Yellow Vest protests of 2018 and 2019, the pensions protests of 2023 and the current calls for a national shutdown are anything to go by, an increasingly skeptical and restive public has little appetite for sacrifices and austerity.
As for getting rid of Macron, France is a country steeped in regicidal revolutionary history and understands both the attractions and pitfalls of giving the boss the chop.
It’s easy to call for his head — but you’ve got to be ready for the chaos that comes next.