Only three months into Michel Barney’s term in France, which collapsed on Wednesday when the New Left Front’s impeachment motion was passed.

The Front’s deputies but the National Rally, Marine Le Pen’s party, voted in favour of the motion.

In particular, 331 deputies voted in favour of the proposal. At at least 289 votes were needed to approve the proposal, while the left and far-right have a total of 332 votes.

A second motion was tabled against the government by the Le Pen party. It was preceded by the discussion of this one by the Front as the larger parliamentary formation. However, given the support of the two major factions, the discussion of the second proposal was considered unnecessary.

In any case, this is one of the shortest prime ministerial terms in France in recent decades, and one that will weigh heavily on Barnier’s posterity. More importantly, the result threatens to put France into a period of prolonged political instability.

The debate in the National Assembly

The debate began at 17:30 GMT on the motions of censure from the New People’s Front of the Left and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. The Left’s motion was discussed first and put to a vote as coming from a larger party.

Given the support of two major factions, the Left’s proposal was almost certain to pass, barring a shocking political contingency.

Michel Barnier, in his speech closing the debate, after recalling the very complex context of public finances, said that “the truth will be revealed in every government”. “The debt will always be there,” he continued.

After criticizing Marine Le Pen, the prime minister put her in the crosshairs again. “We don’t have the same concept of patriotism,” the prime minister said.

Earlier in her remarks, the National Rally leader said “we are facing a moment of truth” and promised an end to the “ephemeral Barnier government”. Her party, she also said, would help bring that end.

She added that the French government had not gone far enough in reaching compromises with her. “We only got crumbs,” she said, and accused Barnier of intransigence.

However, Le Pen said she was “not happy” to support the impeachment motion from New Popular Front. “The institutions are forcing us to mix our votes with those of the far left,” she said.

The National Assembly was also addressed by former Prime Minister, Gabriel Atal, who said National Rally MPs were making “a mistake before history” by voting for the motion of censure

Atal condemned the “sad spectacle” of recent weeks and denounced “the alliance between the LFI and the RN being forged”. “French politics is sick and neither on the far left nor on the far right will the French be able to find the antidote,” he said and: “I think what the French are asking for is less noise and more action.”

Three-month term

It was an inglorious end to a government that had the task of rescuing France from the crisis it was plunged into after the European elections. In the end, as Politico notes, Barnier’s brief tenure will be remembered as a failure of immense proportions.

He had taken over on September 5 with a difficult task: to help calm a storm that threatened France and the eurozone. A man who had served four terms as a minister and two more as a commissioner, as well as a Brexit negotiator, was asked to pass a budget in a country already running large deficits.

For a while it gave the impression that Barnier could pull it off. Expectations were high, but possibly the image we had of Barnier was “inflated”.

However, despite the tacit acceptance from Marine Le Pen and her party, Barnier failed to get the consensus he was seeking on the important issues, particularly on the budget.

Yesterday, Tuesday, Barnier made a last-ditch effort to win the consensus of the far-right, asking MPs to “show responsibility”. A call that, when made at a time when motions of censure have been tabled, looks more like a resignation than a plea from a prime minister.

On Wednesday, given that the Left Front and Le Pen would vote for impeachment, the “moment of truth” arrived, as Marine Le Pen said during the debate on the impeachment motion from the Left.

Barnier became the first prime minister since 1962 to lose his post to a motion of impeachment. The blow to his posterity will be great: he managed to prevent the expansion of Brexit populism in Europe, but he lost “within a seat” in the French parliament.

But in the European Parliament, however, he has lost in the European Parliament in the French parliament, but in the French parliament in France’s lower house.