I am French, so I am not going to answer to the last part about Keir Starmer, but I can help with your first question.
The executive branch of the French government is two-headed, with a President and a Prime Minister.
The President is the head of state, as such they are elected by universal suffrage, and are viewed as an arbitrator. The President is the commander in chief of the French military, and acts as the head of the French diplomacy.
The Prime Minister is the chief of the government. The PM is nominated by the President, to form a government or cabinet of several ministers. Together they are responsible, before the parliament, of implementing policies in the best interest of the nation. The parliament can revoke the PM and its government.
That’s where it gets messy :
if the parliament’s majority party is the presidential party, then the President can nominate a political ally as Prime Minister, and in practice, the center of gravity of the President-Prime Minister couple will move towards the president, who will be free to enact his policies.
However, if the majority party in the parliament is opposed to the President, then the President can only nominate a PM from the majority, otherwise the parliament will promptly revoke the PM. This situation is called a cohabitation, and it happened only 3 times under the 5th French republic. With a President and PM in opposition, the center of gravity is usually tilted towards the PM.
Now what happens when there is no clear majority party or coalition in the parliament? That has never happened before, not at the scale we are witnessing today. And there are no clear guidelines : presumably, the President will nominate a PM from the party that came out in the lead in these parliamentary election. But if all the other parties reject the new PM, they could oust them. A multi-party coalition could be created to reach the absolute majority, but lately the major political formations have been sternly opposed.
The coming days are going to be very interesting, and a good stress-test for our institutions.
Okay that clears up a lot. So if the President manages military and foreign relations, does the PM manage bureaus? Who creates the budget?
Merci! This is well written. Good luck to you!
The election goal of today (2nd turn) and last week (1st turn) was to elect members of the parlement. You have people with local needs, views, representating people from all around the country. We vote for someone that will represent us in front of the governement.
They are the source of any new laws, voted in this parlement then validated in the senate (another set of people, usually older… Sound familiar for our US readers? Normal, USA copied our way of working when creating the country… with some variations and interruption of course…). They also create and vote the budget (including the army budget btw).The prime minister give the direction of the parlement laws.
Usually the majority of the parlement and the prime minister are aligned because they represent the party big lines. Today we had a big shift of direction (party) so the whole governement (PM + Ministers except the president) need to be reworked as they are no more aligned with the parlement just elected. Staying will bring nothing but eternal obstruction and lack of legitimacy.
And usually the president, elected directly by us in another election, make sure his parlement is aligned with him. Macron tried that with the dissolution but got the complete opposite result at the end.
Frenchs don’t like when a president try a “technicality” (the dissolution) to gain more power and bring nazi in power as a side effect
It was a huge risk, playing with our institution, and it was also obvious - when he announced it - that he will loose even more.
He probably tried to get us vote for his party to block the nazi like the last time… But as he didn’t followed his own vow since the last election…
For additional context: The nigth of the previous election, when we were doing another barrage against the nazi and elected him as a consequence, he told us “i own you my victory and won’t forget it”. He even did worst, shitting on the face of the people who did the barrage instead of being moderate.
well, he lost his bet
But i won’t be surprised if he continue to even be more silly before the end of his term. I expect another dissolution in one year or him leaving the position…
Ps: Thanks to the candidate of Macron party (arrived 3rd last week in my town) who didn’t put her name on the 2nd turn to make sure the nazi (arrived 1st in my town -_-) couldn’t win. Having only one candidate against the nazi make us win our local election.
At least, some people know where to draw a line between republic and politics
