With Olympics Over, Macron Feels the Heat Return

To get John Authers' newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here.

The Olympics ended 12 days ago. France’s epic legislative elections concluded July 7. And yet, things will get only hotter for President Emmanuel Macron. The autumn political season is typically a time of protest and agitation, as the French come back from their long August vacances and resume protests, strikes and the political battles du jour, often around the budget. There’s even a headline-cliché expression for this: La rentrée sera chaude, or “the return will be hot.” There is of course a heat wave in France, September is a week away, and in a real sense — the Olympic “truce” aside — the political heat and attendant economic mess never went off the boil.

Macron is meeting Friday with political parties and delegations to try to extricate himself from the mess he made by calling snap elections that left him weaker than before, with a hostile National Assembly that has no majority. If all goes well for him, a government will emerge that he can work with — and can get things done in the legislature despite the deep divisions. But at the moment, there is even less certainty over the identity of a new prime minister — who runs the government day-to-day — than there is over the next American president. In the US, the field has been narrowed to two. In France, there remains a range of possibilities reflecting the temporary, ungainly coalition of a newly empowered left and reduced center that formed to deny a parliamentary majority to Marine Le Pen’s the far-right National Rally. And all that before the first manif hits the streets.