The Duran Podcast - France new PM Lecornu. Macron refuses to leave

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

France new PM Lecornu. Macron refuses to leave

All right, Alexander, we have a new prime minister in France. It is Le Carno, a man who is very much allied with Macron. But I've read a bit about Le Carno, and they say he has a very good relationship with Le Pen as well. He gets along with Le Pen, the former Secretary of Defense. And he was picked by Macron very quickly after the Beirou government collapsed, losing the no-confidence votes by a big, big margin. And Macron decided that the best route for him was to go with another prime minister. I believe this is his seventh or ninth prime minister that he cycled through.

So anyway, your thoughts about Le Carnieu in France, your thoughts about the protests that broke out a couple of days ago in France as well, protests with one message. Macron, leave. That was the message. We don't want you here anymore. Your thoughts. Well, Macron is, in my opinion, the single most proximate destabilizing issue cause in France. If France is becoming increasingly ungovernable, if politics there are paralyzed, if government is becoming paralyzed, it is because of Macron.

Macron continues to cling on to the presidency, even though he's becoming increasingly unpopular and discredited. And he won't get the message. He won't leave. He clings on. And whenever he loses votes and loses prime ministers, he comes up with another prime minister. Now, I'm going to make a guess. I think Leur Corneux is the last throw of the dice.

that Macron has. I think Le Corneux has been with Macron since the moment when Macron became president. He's been very, very loyal to Macron. He's, in fact, if you like, the ultimate loyalist, I believe he's the only minister who's been a member of Macron's government continuously since Macron's election. But of course, it's been relatively easy for Leurconu up to this time because he's been defense minister and as defense minister, obviously he's been involved in some controversial things, but he's not had to come to the parliament and to propose a budget or to try to promote other parts of Macron's agenda. Now he does. And yes, he has had reasonably good relations with Le Pen until recently. But that was before when he was defense minister. Now that

he is prime minister, the dynamic changes. And if Le Corneux continues to loyally serve Macron and comes up with budgets that are even watered down versions of the budget that the French parliament rejected, overwhelmingly, by the way, on Monday, then for all the fact that Le Pen and Le Penh-Kon-U have in the past had friendly relations with each other, I have no doubt whatsoever that Le Pen and the National Rally will combine with the other parties against Leu-Kon-U as well. So Le-Kon-U is in an unusual position because, in a sense, Macron is now dependent on him. If he wants Le Corneux,

if he wants to start isolating Macron and working to bring him down, he could start to shift the balance of the government further, more back to Marine Le Pen's side. I don't think that's going to happen. I think he will stick with Macron. I think he comes to the same stable as Macron.

I think we're likely to get more of a crisis. And I think the sense of crisis in France now is so pervasive and so strong that whatever Le Corneux does is probably not going to work, I suspect Le Corneau also will fall before very long. When that happens, I don't think Macron will ever, will have anywhere else to hide, or anyone else behind whom he can hide. And at that point, I think the demands for him to go will increase

and perhaps they will become irresistible. Yeah, but in three months time or in six months' time, when we're back to another no-confidence vote on a budget, however long it takes, we're going to end up there, right? Eventually we're going to end up with another no-confidence vote to pass a budget. But when that happens, France is going to be in a much, much worse position, aren't they? I mean, the economy is not going to get better. It's going to be worse.

No. Look on who can do one of two things. You can either try and do what Byrou did, propose a budget like Byruth, which will be rejected and which will fail, in which case the political crisis will deepen and the economic crisis will deepen. Or he can do what basically Macron used to do for most of his presidents. which has continued to leave things as they basically are. Now, that is controversial. Many people will say that in France, Macron has pursued a neoliberal policy. He has, in some respects, I mean, he raised the retirement age, he's changed the tax system

to some extent. He's done all kinds of things, you know, in regulatory things. But overall, when you look at the general policies that he has followed, he has always responded up to now with political challenges, with a yellow vest protests, for example, by trying to dampen protests, first by deploying the riot police, the CRS, but also by spending more money, increasing debt levels, letting the economy in effect drift further and further into debt. And, well, it's possible that Macron and Le Corneu could try and do that over the next year in order to avoid a political crisis, in order to see Macron, you know, gain a few more months.

But the only effect of that will be that the underlying situation in France deteriorates, because what France needs is a strong government that is able to take action. You can discuss at great detail what that action will be. There are many different plans and ideas, but you need a strong government with the authority to do that and the mandate to do that from the French people. And Macron can't provide it. His support is down to 15%. He's a discredited and massively unpopular figure.

The only way that France can start to deal with its problems is for Macron to go, for there to be elections, both parliamentary elections and presidential elections. And then just possibly we will get a strong government. We can start to address properly France's problems. And until Macron leaves, the situation can only continue to get worse. Yeah, but for Macron, his goal is to make it to 2027, isn't it? Yeah. So he may not even care in what situation France is in. If he can just make it 2027, I'm certain he's sitting there and he's saying, I just have

one year, a little more than a year to go and I can make it to the election, then I can exit the scene. I become president of the European Commission. Ursula becomes president of Germany, right? That's probably the plan. And that's it. He's done. He's out.

Right? So maybe his concern is not so much how he leaves France, in what state he leaves France in. It's just, his concern is just, let me make it to 2027. I don't care if I have to appoint another six more prime minister. I mean, that is Macron's strategy. The question is, can he, can he make it there? What will the French people and will the opposition? allow him to make it to that 2027 point.

And another question of perhaps my final question is, Le Carnou, could be the successor, perhaps, to Macaron and his legacy, if you want to call it, that his policies. Well, indeed, well, indeed, absolutely. Now, there's a number of things to say here. First of all, I think Macaron has every intention of staying on for that extra year. and the reason is that he does have an agenda which he wants to fulfill through that year. First of all, he wants to keep project Ukraine going.

At the moment, at this particular point in time, if there's an election tomorrow, the leader, the person who will win, almost certainly will either be Marine Le Pen, if you can resolve the legal problems, which you might be able to do, by the way, or alternatively, Badela, the other leader of the National Front. And they are committed to basically bringing Project Ukraine, Coalition of the Willing Ideas, deploying troops to Ukraine, all of that. They're committed to bringing all that to a stop. Macron is totally invested in this.

He wants to see this through, and he wants to keep Project U.S. Ukraine going and he will want to keep it going through the next year at the very least. That is one. The second is that he wants to be there to be the president of France in order to help Ursula and Draghi and all of the others to press forward with further European integration. I mean, the slogan they all come up with, whenever there is a problem, within Europe, within the Union, the European Union, it is always more Europe. And Macron has often used that himself.

He's been a consistent supporter of European integration. And he sees the chance now to push that agenda forward. And again, there's once again talk of Eurobonds. We've discussed this in other programs. This Eurobonds in order to promote rearmament. Mance seems to be teetering on the brink of agreeing to that. Ossula is promoting it. There's all sorts of ideas about military builds up and industrial strategies.

Macron wants to be there in order to move that forward because he knows again that if either Le Pen or Badell or indeed Jean-Luc-Melancher, come in, they are more likely than not to oppose all of these moves. And the people in Brussels will be telling Macron, stay where you are, because we need this extra year from you so that we can move forward, both with Project Ukraine and with the projects of European integration that we're going to be pursuing and pursuing actively over the next year. And thirdly, Macron, I think, still wants to find someone who can be put up to defeat Le Pen or Badella or indeed, Melangor, if it comes to that, in the next presidential election. And quite plausibly, it could be Leuque, now, more likely than not, if he clings on, the centre that he represents, Macron's centre, will continue to collapse,

especially if the economy continues to deteriorate, which it will, and the French will become more and more angry. But even if Macron says to himself, well, realistically, I might not be able to stop Le Pen or Badella this time. in this next year to lock France in to the European agenda, that it is essential that I stay. And those discussions are taking place in Paris and they're taking place in Brussels. Macron might be completely isolated amongst the French people, which he is. I mean, President of France, who's down to 15% support, has basically lost his hold over the peaceful of France. He might be isolated amongst the French people, but he is not isolated with the globalist,

Europeanist establishment of which he is a par. Bingo, that's who he represents. He doesn't represent the French people. No. He doesn't care about the French people. What he cares about is the globalist establishment. And that's who he's going to work for. Exactly.

Exactly. And they are telling him to stay. So in the meantime, going back to your previous point, the situation in France itself gets more and more unstable. The economy becomes more and more unstable. There is an inevitable increase in social tensions. But the agenda that they want to follow continues to be rammed through. Now, there are mechanisms in France to block this.

There is an impeachment mechanism, which is very complicated. I believe it involves the Council of State, which is globalist to the core, and which will probably back Macron in a crisis, just to say. There are other means in France, as we've discussed many times, public protest, is not something that is as politically controversial as it is in other countries. The French have a tradition for it, going all the way back to the revolution. And as I said, it's a more respectable way of political action than it is in some parts of Europe. But the president of France, once he is there, is very, very difficult to dislodge.

And Macron, with his vanity and arrogance, I suspect, is going to be even more difficult to dislodge than some other people in his situation. might have been. What the only thing that I think could change the calculus is if over the next year there is indeed a major financial crisis in France, something which of course I would not want to see. I mean, I don't want to see people thrown out at their jobs and businesses fail. I'm not, you know, nihilistic in that way. But putting aside what I want, I suspect that over the next year, even as the situation deteriorates, the ECB, the Commission, the Germans, will do everything within their power to hold things together. I was just going to say that.

If it's one year, they'll do whatever they have to do to keep France to float for that one year. No doubt about it. Just a final question about Macron and who he serves. It seems like the big three in Europe, Macron, Stamer, and. and Mertz, they're more open about the fact that they are beholden to the globalist agenda rather than their own citizens. I mean, they don't hide it anymore. They don't hide it at all, actually. No. At least you get, you definitely get that from Macron and Stamer, and now you're getting it more and more from Mertz as well. Yes. What do you make of that?

This is absolutely true. I mean, the mask is, the mask is falling. And here, I have to say this. I think part of the factor that's creating this dynamic is the entry, the re-election of Donald Trump. I think that Trump pursuing a nationalist patriotic agenda in the United States has given these people no space to hide. They can't any longer pretend that they are nationalists in the same way and sovereignists in the way that Trump is. So because of that, they're becoming increasingly open and, by the way, aggressive about what they are. Yeah, true. All right.

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