The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu – who unexpectedly resigned last week before being reappointed four days later – finally cobbled together a new cabinet for Emmanuel Macron to appoint just hours before he left for the Gaza peace summit. Few expect Macron to return from Egypt with a solution to the deepening domestic political crisis he presides over, however. Fewer still have enough trust in a government so subservient to Macron that it can survive the forthcoming deliberations of the National Assembly.

Because this is no conventional parliamentary crisis, but a crise de régime. Inspired by Charles de Gaulle’s vision of executive pre-eminence vested in a quasi-monarchic presidential ascendancy, the governing system established by the Fifth Republic in 1958 no longer functions. Challenged by a hung parliament, a severe fiscal crisis and a volatile international environment, the French state is paralysed.

At the heart of the problem lie the nature of the presidential office and the current incumbent’s politics. Defeated in the June 2024 European elections, Macron dissolved parliament and called snap elections, recklessly risking the ignominy of the far right, then riding an........

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