There was a time when advanced European countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, scoffed at other nations who struggled to form governments.
Italy was a serial offender in the 1960s and 1970s; and more recently there was a period when Belgium went for months without a government and nobody seemed to notice.
Constitutionally, it can’t happen in Britain: the ancient maxim that ‘the King’s Government must be carried on’ means that once you have a prime minister he or she carries on until another one is appointed.
Not since 1812, when Spencer Perceval was assassinated, has a prime minister died in office and tested the theory; even if one were to, a stand-in would be found immediately, pending the election of a successor by the party of government.
But things have been somewhat difficult in France since the rash decision of President Macron to call a parliamentary election for the last Sunday in June and the first Sunday in July.
The result was not what he wanted: he seemed to think he could morally blackmail the French people into choosing an Assemblée nationale with which he and what he calls the ‘consensus’ would feel comfortable: but sadly for him, he was mistaken.
His arrogance went a little too far this time. In the first round the Rassemblement National (RN) – a party generally labelled ‘far right’* but which is really just Poujadiste, and not even so right wing as Poujade’s movement in the 1950s – were the clear front runners.
Read more: French election: Is it correct to call Le Pen and Bardella far-right?
This panicked everyone else, and they ganged up on the RN to stop them doing so well in the second round.
Tactical voting gambit did not pay off
Their tactical voting was entirely successful, in that it stopped Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella and their associates from taking over the parliamentary government of France.
However, it was a disaster in that it pushed to the forefront a left-wing coalition in which Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise became a main player, and began to seek the right to have a prime minister.
And that appeared to be the moment when Mr Macron, himself, panicked.
France discovered a new constitutional gambit: it was called the Olympic Games.
While the country was mounting a show of what it hoped would be success and unity at the Paris games, the president was determined that the ugliness of politics, and the political crisis that he more than any other individual had done so much to create, would not be allowed to rain on that particular parade.
He said the appointment of the prime minister would have to wait until after the Olympics.
But even once they were over, progress was slow.
Parties in continual disagreement
One thing, however, became clear: that just as none of the other parties had been prepared to accept the dominance of the RN in the Assemblée nationale, nor were they prepared to accept a prime minister who had anything to do with Mr Mélenchon or La France Insoumise (LFI).
This in turn proved to be bad news for one of France’s most ambitious younger politicians, Lucie Castets.
Read more: French left’s PM candidate: who is she and Macron’s reaction
Ms Castets, who is 37, was the nominee of the Left, including LFI, for Matignon, but fiercely opposed by everyone else.
She is not a member of the Assemblée nationale, but a senior civil servant.
Mr Macron said it was not the question of who she was that prevented his appointing her even though he desperately needed a prime minister; it was what she stood for.
Her policies include massive tax rises and the undoing of all the Macron pension reforms, which were highly necessary in order to stop the French economy from going out of control.
Read more: ‘Macron is right about pensions – but being right is rarely enough’
As for her personally, Ms Castets is a central casting modern socialist.
She is the daughter of a two psychoanalysts and is now married to and has a child with another woman; she is highly educated, not just in the conventional way of a French civil servant, but also she speaks English and Chinese (she studied at the London School of Economics and in Shanghai as well as at ENA).
She left the Parti Socialiste in her early 20s largely because she did not regard François Hollande’s politics as president as being left-wing enough.
She later became advisor to Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris. It was not least the disdain in which Ms Hidalgo is held by the centre and right-of-centre parties for her stewardship of Paris that makes her a toxic association for Ms Castets.
No new PM in sight
None of this need in the end prevent her from becoming prime minister; at the time of writing that decision is still to be taken, as a game of bluff and counter-bluff is played between the president and the Assemblée nationale. [Editor's note: the president announced on Monday, August 27, after Mr Heffer's article was published, that Ms Castets would not be named as the new prime minister.]
Mr Macron was talking, before having to appoint a prime minister, of finding one through a means of ‘consensus’.
In truth, there was as much onus on the parliamentarians to find that consensus as there was on Mr Macron.
After all, there can be no new parliamentary elections until the end of June next year at the earliest, so the parliamentarians are stuck with Mr Macron just as much as he is stuck with them, and France does need to be governed.
Mr Macron was seeking a prime minister to lead a group that would not fall at the first motion of no confidence, according to his people.
Ms Castets said after meeting Macron on August 23 that she had told him the people of France had demanded a change of direction, and she expected him, in his appointment of a prime minister, to respect that.
The trouble is, the RN, having come top in the first round, could equally argue that the change of direction is one that should go their way.
By the time you read this Mr Macron may have pulled a rabbit out of the hat. Whether that rabbit can keep running is a very different matter.
* Editor’s note: In March, top administrative court the Conseil d’Etat rejected an RN complaint over the Interior Ministry listing it as far-right in the 2023 senatorial elections. It found no blatant error in the ministry having done so.
