Published in the Libération on 8 July under the title: “Quickly, a provisional government with the left, the centre and the right”

The majority is not unfindable. France – after exit polls – is not ungovernable. It is not chaos. A majority exists. It is there. All you have to do is to accept to see it, because 174 elected members from the united left-wing parties and 156 from the centrist parties that supported Emmanuel Macron’s re-election make how many MPs in all?

That makes 330, that is 41 more than the absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly. So no, of course, it’s not as simple as that because a part of the left, the France insoumise, refuses to govern with the centrists who themselves do not even want to hear about a coalition including these same “Insoumis” without whom there is no absolute majority.

That is the whole problem, but Les Républicains, the remaining moderate right that did not form an alliance with the Lepénistes of the Rassemblement national, have 66 elected members. With them, there is once again an absolute majority, and if there are still a few votes missing, they can be found among the less radical “Insoumis”, all those who have broken with the founder of their party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and his constant provocations.

In most European capitals, the French equation would seem easy, but in Paris, it is a headache because a tricolour coalition – left, right and centre – is not part of the national culture. The French immediately equate it with inexcusable tricks and schemes, since for the last six decades, since General De Gaulle and the Fifth Republic, they have only known the alternation between left and right, and have forgotten that in France too, in the 20s, 30s and 50s, coalition governments were the rule.

France needs time to adapt. It must be allowed to mourn the loss of a right and a left that no longer exist, since the right has splintered into a centre-right and an extreme right, and the left-wing parties are united only by their rejection of nationalism and xenophobia. France must first come to terms with the fact that its political borders now separate two countries: one that has entered the 21st century (three-fifths of the French population) and another, a minority but numerous, that has clung to the nostalgia of a mythologised past. There is the France of order and the France of movement, the France of the cities and the France of the countryside, the France of an emerging world and the France of a disappearing world.

A transition is essential because this divided France cannot move overnight from the past to the future. It needs a present which can reassure it and which is necessarily a composite one. Rather than a coalition government, it needs a government that is perceived as provisional and that will therefore only be in place for a given time, the twenty-four or thirty months necessary to achieve a limited number of clear, essential and consensual changes.

The first is the introduction of a proportional voting system enabling all forces representing more than 5% of the electorate to have their MPs and building the coalitions of tomorrow.

The second is the launch of a plan to combat medical and administrative desertification in rural areas, which today feel abandoned by an urbanised country.

The third is a reduction in taxation for the middle classes, offset by an increase in the tax burden on companies and the wealthiest individuals.

The fourth is to reduce the number of local and regional administrative levels, which have multiplied to the point where they are duplicating each other resulting in unsustainable budgetary waste.

The fifth is the introduction of university entrance examinations designed to raise academic standards, reduce the number of students failing their studies and make better use of the national education budget.

The Left, Centre and Right who set themselves these five priorities would also be united in their desire to strengthen the ranks of the European Union, speed up the creation of a common defence and ensure that Ukraine has the means to repel Russian aggression.

Once this time had elapsed, proportional legislative elections would be held shortly before the 2027 presidential election, to which a new, calmer France would move, on the road to a two-party system pitting a democratic party against an inward-looking one.