France woke up on Thursday with the feeling that there had been burglars during the night. They had dusted off the government. Or at least the Prime Minister, the 73-year-old conservative Michel Barnier. The mastermind was an unholy alliance of far-right and far-left parties: Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s “Indomitable”, which also brought along modern left-wing parties such as the Socialists and the Greens. With 311 votes in 577 seats in the National Assembly, they ended Barnier’s term of office after just three months.
