There are plenty of tough jobs in politics but none tougher than the one just handed to Sébastien Lecornu, the third French prime minister to be appointed by Emmanuel Macron in a year.

Lecornu has been given the nigh-on impossible task of getting an austerity budget through parliament at the head of a minority government facing implacable opposition from parties of the hard right and hard left. Talk about poisoned chalices.

The conventional wisdom is that Macron and his succession of premiers are the only ones prepared to face up to reality, which is that France’s unwillingness to get serious about reducing its budget deficit leaves it at the mercy of the financial markets.

Sooner or later, the bond market vigilantes – the collective term for traders in government bonds – will force the French political class to act. Eventually, the warring political parties will accept the truth of what Margaret Thatcher said in the 1980s. You can’t buck the market.

Britain, so the story goes, also needs to wake up, or else the markets will be coming for us next. There is still a chance to avoid a meltdown, but it requires the sort of action that French MPs have so far resisted. Raise taxes. Cut welfare. Take the axe to spending programmes.

The reason

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