Less than 24 hours after unveiling his cabinet — and just 26 days after being appointed — the Prime Minister was out the door, leaving Emmanuel Macron once again rummaging through his Rolodex for a willing volunteer.
For a presidency that once promised renewal, this has begun to look less like a republic and more like a badly run student union.
The announcement came after a terse hour-long meeting between Macron and Lecornu at the Élysée. One imagines the conversation went something like this: “Thank you for your service, Sébastien. Now, do be a good chap and close the door on your way out.” With this, Macron has managed to burn through five prime ministers in a little over two years— a turnover rate that would embarrass even Liz Truss’s lettuce.
Continuity Without Imagination
Lecornu’s downfall was, in many ways, preordained. Appointed in September to pick up the pieces of François Bayrou’s collapsed government, he was supposed to project stability. Instead, his grand debut involved unveiling a cabinet so indistinguishable from his predecessor’s that journalists had to double-check the date on their press releases.
Bruno Le Maire was shuffled from finance to defence, as if moving the same figures around the chessboard might somehow produce checkmate. Opposition parties did not so much criticise the line-up as ridicule it. The left called it stale, the right called it arrogant, and even members of Macron’s own camp muttered about “missed chances” and “déjà vu with better lighting.”
An Arithmetical Tragedy
Even if Lecornu had produced the political equivalent of sliced bread, he still faced the same fundamental problem: arithmetic. Macron’s party has no outright majority, and the National Assembly is currently a snake pit of factions who agree on only one thing — that they don’t like Macron’s governments.
Lecornu, in a burst of noble folly, promised not to invoke Article 49.3, the constitutional sledgehammer that allows the executive to push legislation through without a vote. In theory, this was an admirable gesture toward parliamentary dialogue. In practice, it was like walking into a riot holding a flower. Within hours, opposition parties were lining up no-confidence motions like artillery shells.
The System Meets the Ego
It would be easy to cast Lecornu as the hapless victim of political forces beyond his control. But this was also the latest episode in a drama of Macron’s own making. The President swept to power in 2017 promising to shatter the old left–right divide. He succeeded — by replacing it with a parliament full of mutually loathing minorities and a presidency that refuses to compromise.
Instead of adapting to this fractured landscape, Macron has doubled down on his favourite strategy: appoint loyal technocrats, keep the machine humming, and hope the political weather improves. Lecornu’s cabinet was the purest expression of that mindset — a rearrangement of insiders with no attempt to build real parliamentary bridges. It lasted less than a day.
Markets and Morale Wobble Again
Financial markets reacted to Lecornu’s resignation with the weary sigh of someone whose train has been cancelled for the third time in a week. Bond yields crept up, the CAC 40 slid, and investors began muttering about France’s ability to govern itself. Domestically, the public looked on with familiar cynicism. Protest movements have shown for years how brittle trust has become; another collapsing government is less a shock than a punchline.
The President’s Next Trick
So what now? Macron must name another prime minister — presumably someone brave (or naïve) enough to climb aboard the same political rollercoaster. He can either attempt to cobble together a genuine cross-party coalition, or he can dissolve the National Assembly and call snap elections. The first requires negotiation skills he has shown little interest in developing; the second risks handing power to forces he cannot control.
It is here that Macron’s predicament turns from dramatic to faintly tragicomic. He has spent eight years styling himself as the moderniser, the rationalist, the man who would drag France out of its cyclical paralysis. Yet under his watch, the Fifth Republic increasingly resembles a sitcom set in a collapsing mansion: new characters wander in, deliver a few lines, and then disappear through a trapdoor.
Lecornu’s 26-day premiership may be the briefest chapter yet, but it is also the most revealing. It shows a presidency that has run out of political tricks, out of parliamentary goodwill, and perhaps out of self-awareness. Macron once promised to transcend French politics. Instead, he has turned it into an endurance test.
The Real Question
The question “Where did it all go wrong for Macron?” is less about any single resignation and more about the slow erosion of political authority. By ignoring the changing structure of the National Assembly and governing as though he still held a comfortable majority, Macron has engineered a situation where each new prime minister is not a solution but a countdown clock. Lecornu simply reached zero first.
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