France is skint, but the French are in denial. To judge by the howls of outrage from the left and the hard right of the French political spectrum, you would think the prime minister, François Bayrou, had just taken a Javier Milei-style chainsaw to public services, announced Doge-style mass layoffs or imposed swingeing pay cuts.

But it was Bayrou’s suggestion that the French should give up two of their 11 cherished public holidays – Easter Monday and 8 May, the anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe – and work instead to increase economic output and hence government revenue that provoked the anger.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, accused the centrist prime minister of leading a “race towards an economic, financial and social abyss for the greater suffering of all”. The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, described the proposals as “a demolition plan for our French model”, and Jordan Bardella, president of the hard-right National Rally (RN), said the the proposal to cancel the two holidays was “a direct attack on our history”.

The hard left and the populist right threatened to bring down the government with no confidence motions in the autumn, when the budget will be put to a hung parliament, as they did with Bayrou’s short-lived predecessor, Michel........

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