In Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, hell is portrayed as a locked room in which characters are condemned to fall out and squabble for all eternity. Ever since foolishly calling a snap election which delivered a deadlocked and divided national assembly, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has found himself trapped in a modern political version of the same plot.

On Monday morning, the third prime minister Mr Macron has appointed in just over a year became the latest to throw in the towel, after only 27 days in the job. Hours after unveiling his ministerial team, Sébastien Lecornu stood down following a backlash from centre-right allies, who objected to the number of carryovers from François Bayrou’s previous administration. By Monday evening, Mr Macron had persuaded Mr Lecornu to conduct a round of last-ditch negotiations to try to resolve the crisis. Should he fail, the president has hinted that the next step will be a second dissolution of parliament and fresh legislative elections.

Such dizzying chaos and dysfunction is bringing mainstream French politics into disrepute, at a time when Marine Le Pen’s far right National Rally enjoys a substantial lead in the polls. For this ominous state of affairs, Mr Macron bears a heavy responsibility. His centrist alliance lost its outright majority in the parliamentary elections of 2022, and was then defeated by a leftwing coalition in the snap poll he called last year. But he has ploughed on as if nothing had changed, pressuring successive prime ministers to propose unpopular austerity budgets without a mandate.

Persisting with this doomed approach, as bond markets increasingly target the EU’s second largest economy, has been irresponsible. Repeatedly, Mr Macron has called for mainstream politicians to compromise and reach a consensus in the national interest. They have signally failed to do that. But the president himself has been the most obdurate, refusing to make any meaningful concessions. In particular, Mr Macron has failed to acknowledge that the public mood (and parliamentary arithmetic) will not permit deficit-cutting measures that primarily come at the expense of public services and the less well-off. Calls from the left for an annual 2% wealth tax on super-rich households, for example, have been resolutely ignored.

As the risk of economic instability mounts, with knock-on effects for the rest of Europe, France needs to find a way out of the impasse. Even if Mr Lecornu manages to patch things up with the centre-right Les Républicains party, the resulting minority government will almost certainly meet the same ignominious fate as its predecessors. Fresh legislative elections, given the polls, would carry a risk of handing power in parliament to the National Rally, or producing further deadlock. But the present political paralysis and infighting is a gift to Ms Le Pen ahead of presidential elections in 2027.

For Mr Macron, who arrived in the Élysée with the avowed intention of preventing the further rise of the far right, the twilight of his second term has turned into a political humiliation. Abroad, he has played a central and valuable role in shaping Europe’s response to a new era of geopolitical instability. But domestically, a combination of hubris and economic rigidity has left him isolated and terminally unpopular. It is highly unlikely that he will himself resign, and Mr Lecornu may yet succeed in keeping the show on the road for a while. But France deserves better from its president and its political class.

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