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Speaker 1: We must go immediately to Catherine Field, who's in France. Catherine,

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Speaker 1: very good morning to you. Good morning mine is So

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Speaker 1: are things going reasonably well at the moment, then are they?

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Speaker 2: Mike, I stopped looking at the news about two minutes ago,

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Speaker 2: and I shuddered to think what I may have messed

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Speaker 2: those two minutes, because it has been the most extraordinary

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Speaker 2: twenty four hours. Even by French standards of political drama,

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Speaker 2: it's been extraordinary. So we had Sunday evening very late,

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Speaker 2: the caretaker prime minister announced his new cabinet. It's the

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Speaker 2: best in Licor news. Said he'd finally, after all the negotiations,

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Speaker 2: come up with the names and then blow me down.

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Speaker 2: The next morning, fourteen hours twenty six minutes later, he

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Speaker 2: announces his resignation. Says the government, which still hasn't met

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Speaker 2: for cabinet, is also going to resign because forteen hours

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Speaker 2: after announcing this cabinet he said that the negotiations that

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Speaker 2: have been going on had gotten nowhere. He said none

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Speaker 2: of the parties involved were able to make compromises. They

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Speaker 2: all just wanted to push their own program onto the government.

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Speaker 2: Then they wanted other parties to adopt to that so

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Speaker 2: governor's fallen. Lecornu had a record twenty seven days as

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Speaker 2: French Prime minister, shortest of a term. He has now

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Speaker 2: been asked to buy Emmanuel Macron, the president, to go

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Speaker 2: away for fourty eight hours to try and find a

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Speaker 2: responsible and stable solution to the crisis of having no government.

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Speaker 2: And once he finds that, then the president will put

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Speaker 2: in place a platform of action and stability. What that

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Speaker 2: means we don't know.

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Speaker 1: No, I was going to say, I didn't understand a

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Speaker 1: word you said. Just then, having said that had at

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Speaker 1: what point does it become Macron's problem. You can't just

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Speaker 1: keep picking people who resign.

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Speaker 2: It is already Macron's problem. Let's just be honest ability here.

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Speaker 2: His first term went quite well. He's swept to power,

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Speaker 2: young new centrist president, and he was also swept to

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Speaker 2: power through parliamentary elections. His party got in, they got

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Speaker 2: a majority. They were able to put in place a

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Speaker 2: lot of those sort of centrist policies that he'd wanted,

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Speaker 2: some of the reforms, particularly to the budget. Second term

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Speaker 2: has not gone well. His party did not get a

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Speaker 2: clear majority. At the start of that he thought he

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Speaker 2: might win a new majority by having new elections mid

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty four that didn't come off. He's had three

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Speaker 2: prime ministers since mid twenty twenty four, so it is

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Speaker 2: his problem. He caused the problem by causing those elections

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Speaker 2: when he didn't need to. Problem is it's very difficult

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Speaker 2: to get rid of a French president and if they

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Speaker 2: die in office or they resigned. He said he's not

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Speaker 2: going to resign. He's staying where he is.

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Speaker 1: OK.

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Speaker 2: The other problem, of course that Mike is French politics is,

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Speaker 2: up until very recently, it was just two parties, so

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Speaker 2: it was sort of go from the social to the

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Speaker 2: Conservatives and backwards and force. They just do not have

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Speaker 2: a culture here of compromise of coalitions, and they're learning

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Speaker 2: that the hard way.

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Speaker 1: That was my next question. How much of what these

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Speaker 1: parties refused to concede was based on the desire their

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Speaker 1: own individual desires to see somebody fall and pay a price.

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Speaker 1: In otherwords, you can say whatever you want, they're not

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Speaker 1: going to agree to anything.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's exactly it. On the one side, you had

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Speaker 2: what they're calling the center ground, which is what Macron

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Speaker 2: was hoping that he could get sort of the center

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Speaker 2: left and the center right together. But of course, the

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Speaker 2: center left, all they wanted to talk about was reforms

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Speaker 2: to the retirement policy, to pension reforms. When it came

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Speaker 2: to the Center rights, they said, well, you know, we

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Speaker 2: want more done on emigration, on migration, on laws regarding

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Speaker 2: non French people and France. The other ones were saying, well,

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Speaker 2: we're not going to do anything unless you bring in

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Speaker 2: a tax to tax are super rich. So there was

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Speaker 2: no compromise. But I mean some people say, you know, Mike,

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Speaker 2: that perhaps Sebastian Corner could have thought of that before

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Speaker 2: he announced the new cabinet.

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Speaker 1: Well, it's a pleasure. Katsine catchup so in cathern Field

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Speaker 1: and France.

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Speaker 2: For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast. Listen live to

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