Backing the collapse of Michel Barnier’s French government is a moment for Marine Le Pen.
It could lead to her best chance for power yet as head of France’s far-right National Rally.
“I’m not calling for Emmanuel Macron’s resignation,” she said, but she made it abundantly clear that he was responsible for France’s political impasse and “the pressure on the president will get stronger and stronger”.
Before deciding to push for Barnier’s downfall, she said she was not the “master of the dirty” – the one dictating the agenda.
But that may well be exactly what she will become by bringing down Emmanuel Macron’s second government since he beat her to the presidency for a second term in 2022.
With his presidency looking ever weaker, it is Le Pen who appears to have the upper hand.
However, this situation is not without enormous risks for her as well.
Le Pen has been playing a waiting game for years as leader of the National Rally. She may be tantalizingly close to power now – but she has to make big choices.
Pushing for a vote of no confidence “comes as a significant risk because people now wonder if she is really acting in the interests of the country or in her own personal interests,” said Prof Armin Steinbach of the HEC business school in Paris.
“What is obvious is that this is not about Barnier… it is about her trying to topple and weaken Macron, obviously for her personal ambitions to become the next president herself,” he told the BBC.
Le Pen has long sought to “normalize” the National Rally (RN) in the eyes of the French people, renaming it six years ago from her father’s old National Front.
Jump back a few months to France’s snap general election, when RN came first with 32% of the vote. Her mission seemed nearly accomplished, though it could only manage third place in the run-off round.
Now in the dying days of 2024, she is taking a bet on whether French voters will see her as being in the national interest to topple a weakened government because she is protesting its 2025 budget, which aims to bring down France’s budget deficit from 6% of national production or GDP.
Barnier had already agreed to several of her demands for social security – but Le Pen decided that was not enough.
There are real economic risks for France as well as real political risks for Le Pen in supporting a left-sponsored vote of no confidence.
After just three months in the job, Barnier has appealed to MPs to act in France’s greater interest, but Le Pen’s party leader Jordan Bardella has accused him of adopting a “strategy of fear”.
Le Pen’s colleagues sense Macron’s potential fall.
RN adviser Philippe Olivier told Le Monde that the president was “a fallen republican monarch advancing with his shirt open and a rope around his neck up to the next dissolution [of parliament]”.
It was Macron’s surprise decision to call an early general election in June that has left France in the political stalemate it finds itself in now.
Le Pen’s argument is that Barnier did not include enough of her demands in his budget, while Barnier said his budget was not “aimed at pleasing” – and he accused her of “trying to get into a kind of bidding war” during their negotiations.
The RN leader could end up plunging France “into the great political and economic unknown”, in the words of Le Figaro’s deputy editor Vincent Trémolet de Viller.
She does not want to be labeled as the politician who pushed France into economic turbulence, when in her eyes Macron is to blame for France’s economic condition.
“It is the result of seven years of amateurism and a spectacular drift in our public finances,” she has said.
There are plenty of French voters who want Macron gone before his term ends in 2027. Recent polls suggest that at least 62% of voters believe the president should step down if the Barnier government falls.
The National Rally would no doubt align with the wider electorate if it pushed for it, although Le Pen has yet to do so.
But the RN leader has other issues going on behind the scenes that her critics believe could be affecting her judgement.
On March 31, a French court will rule in a lengthy trial against her and other party figures regarding allegations of misuse of funds from the European Parliament.
Prosecutors want her to go to prison and face a five-year ban from public office.
If that were to happen, her hopes of winning the presidency would be dashed.
For Marine Le Pen, this moment could really be now or never.
She has applied for the top job three times. If she gets to run a fourth time in the coming months, she has a great chance of winning.
Jordan Bardella is already considered more popular than Le Pen both inside and outside the National Rally, and if Macron sees out his term, the 29-year-old party chief would be favorite to run in 2027.
No French government has fallen after a vote of no confidence since 1962.
Grab this and Le Pen might not be forgiven the next time France goes to the polls.