🇫🇷France on Edge: RN Surges in Polls, Bayrou set to fall, and Macron Braces for September Showdown
Le Pen’s Rassemblement National leads with 31.5%, Bayrou’s premiership to collapse, a general strike looms on 10 September, and Macron fights to hold the centre as France edges towards chaos
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This week
📊Polling update
💰The RN is now the #1 public aid recipient
📢Remember remember the tenth of September
⌛Macron’s post-Bayrou plans
📊Polling update
God we haven’t done one of these in a while, it’s like going back to high school
This week saw a fresh Elabe survey for BFM TV and La Tribune Dimance being release, which paints a stark picture of France’s political balance ahead of any potential legislative elections that could result from François Bayrou’s government being removed on Monday.
When asked for first-round voting intentions, it’s the Rassemblement National and its allies who currently dominate the field with 31.5%, comfortably ahead of the resurgent left-bloc on 23.5%. President Macron’s camp, Ensemble, trails in third at 14%, followed by Les Républicains on 10.5%.
Naturally, this isn’t the whole story, and we see even more fragmentation in the fringes. The far-left (2%) remains marginal, comprised of the Communists and their allies,while the diverse left (6.5%), diverse right (2.5%), and Reconquête (5%) chip away at the mainstream
A notable 12% of respondents, however, express no intention to vote at all, a reminder that abstention could once again shape the outcome as much as any particular ideological support, protest vote, or flight of whimsy.
💰The RN is now the #1 public aid recipient
So let’s start the week off with a fun fact:
According to a report that was published this Saturday, the Rassemblement National will be the #1 recipient of public aid in 2025, receiving a whopping €14.8 million in public aid to political parties, out of the €65 million to be given to political parties.
An increase compared to the €10.2 million they received in 2024, and ahead of the Presidential coalition (€11.3 million), the Parti Socialiste (€7.9 million) and Horizons (€3 million).
The reason for this is that political parties in France are provided with a certain level of funding based on the number of votes they received in the first round of the legislative elections, as well as the number of deputies they have.
However, there are certain things that people should keep in mind, such as that fact that Eric Ciotti’s l’Union des droites pour la République (UDR) being penalised because they supported five times more male candidates than female. This dropped their funding from €1.3 million to €600,000.
For the full list:
Rassemblement National - €14.8 million
Presidential majority - €11.3 million
Parti Socialiste - €7.9 million
Les Républicains - €7.4 million
La France Insoumise - €7.4 million
Europe Ecologie Les Verts - €3.5 million
Parti Communiste Francais - €2.1 million
l’Union des droites pour la République - €600,000
Reconquete - €200,000
📢Remember remember the tenth of September
So, we know that Prime Minister François Bayrou is likely going down tomorrow, on Monday 8 September 2025, and normally I’ll be covering this over at https://www.twitch.tv/julienhoez and https://www.youtube.com/@JulienHoez_, so make sure you’re subscribed to both of those channels.
However, for Bayrou, the humiliation won’t simply end there, as his premiership will have triggered an attempt at a general strike on September 10th against austerity, Bayrou, and Macron.
Now, while there *is* a lot of interest in this, and while we can expect there to be a decent mobilisation of left-wingers and far-left activists as well as some far-right individuals, the international community appears to be expecting more from this than they should, and making a lot of comparisons to the gilets jaunes.
And there are several reasons why this is unlikely to reach those heights.
Firstly, as highlighted by Le Monde this week, there has not been a massive adherence to the general strike yet, with one of the largest telegram channels organising this effort only managing to reach 11,500 subscribers.
This is compounded by the fact that local city-by-city and town-by-town channels are managing only a few hundred subscribers, or, in the case of major cities, a few thousand.
Le Monde covers the fact fragmentation is hindering organisation efforts, and that there are also private channels where you can’t access the chat, such as on platforms like Signal and WhatsApp, without an invitation from someone involved.
However, it’s important to note that there *are* large accounts, pages, and political parties supporting this movement, so we’d need to see what the impact is. However, based on the efforts we’re seeing now, and even with a generous estimate, we’re still far from the 287,710 protesters involved in the Gilets Jaunes.
Another reason for the situation here has been covered by BFM TVs Raphael Grably, and Visibrain France, who uncovered a massive astroturfing (manipulation) effort surrounding the September 10 mobilisation efforts.
What this means is that a lot of hyperactive, fake, anonymous accounts making over 1000 tweets a day, as well as suspicious networks, have been pushing the #BloquonsTout (Block everything) hashtag and the movement pages themselves.
Visibrain France did an excellent analysis, breaking down the fact that having started last May, the movement was spread across major ideological fault-lines, such as the “Sovereignist and identitarian right, the radical and anticapitalist left, as well as the Ex-Yellow Vests and apolitical accounts”.
This was only recently reversed, when the political left (LFI, EELV, PCF, and PS) became involved and disrupted the ideological equilibrium, thereby increasing the strength of the radical left-leaning faction.
So should we expect with all of this? Politicisation and securitisation out the wazoo in every direction.
Bruno Retailleau (LR), the minister of the interior, called upon French prefects to mobilise the police and show maximum vigilance in the face of the 10 September movement general strike.
In telegram messages that were procured by Le Figaro, Retailleau has been pushing for police forces to stop any “attempt to block the infrastructures essential to the life of the nation”, going as far as to state that “these instructions are also applicable to possible attempts to block educational establishments, particularly university or secondary schools.”
Now, with the strong police presence we can likely expect, we can safely assume that there will be clashes at the main protest sites, as well as at schooling systems, which whatever side you stand on here, will lead to a few hundred videos decrying police brutality or violent protestors.
One thing to be wary of, which is always the case in these protests, is that extremists often participate to create trouble and start fights. On the far-left, these are the black bloc activists who are usually supporters of anarchism, anarcho-communism, communism, libertarian socialism and/or proletarian internationalism.
Then, from the far-right, you will often have similar violent activists such as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, extremist monarchists (and to be clear, not all monarchists do this), and other activists who seek to create trouble.
But, we’ll see how this all plays out, but one thing is for certain: any protest planning to shut down transport, schools, and the ability of individuals to go about their daily lives has every chance of getting ugly.
⌛Macron’s post-Bayrou plans
Now, moving on to the post-Bayrou planning from Macron’s side: it seems that reports indicate that Emmanuel Macron is planning to nominate a new prime minister fairly quickly.
According to several reports, including by Politico, Emmanuel Macron’s team is planning to have a replacement for Bayrou ready by September 18th, about 10 days after Bayrou is expected to fall.
Now, there are several problems with this plan:
Firstly, does he have any potential candidate who will fare better than Bayrou? In my expert opinion, I don’t think so. Both the left bloc and the far-right have completely opposite policy positions, as does the Centre.
Secondly, what does he do when his next candidate eventually falls in a similar way? Does he then give the RN a chance to launch their own failed Prime Ministerial bid and help them to fuel anti-institution unrest?
Or does Macron give it to the far-left, let them launch their own failed Prime Ministerial bid, and help Jean-Luc Mélenchon fuel anti-institutional, anti-Fifth Republic unrest?
There is also a bigger question that everybody is asking themselves:
What is the point where Macron calls yet another new legislative election and rolls the dice, once again? Or will he refuse to do so, knowing that the expected result would be an emboldened far-right and a strengthened far-left, and what would amount to the massacring of his foreign and domestic policy agenda?
Unfortunately, nobody knows what Macron is thinking at the best of times, but we’ll have to wait and see how this unfolds, which is why you should join us on Twitch or Youtube for a fun discussion and Q&A.
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Giving more to the party that collected the more votes does not promote the visibility of new ideas.
Mr. Hoez, the surge of the RN is troubling to me. Am I missing something? Why is France embarking on austerity?