Having led a government that lasted 836 minutes, Sébastien Lecornu has now become prime minister of France for the second time in a week, without it being clear why his chances of success might be greater this time.
After delaying the appointment until deep into the evening on Friday, President Emmanuel Macron again asked Mr. Lecornu, a close centrist ally, to form a government, in what appeared to be an admission that he had run out of options.
“One has the impression that the more he is alone, the more rigid he grows in his initial position,” Marine Tondelier, the leader of the Green Party, said after she attended a meeting on Friday between Mr. Macron and the leaders of several parties.
France, a nuclear power and one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, has a certain idea of itself. It is not that of a country whose last government survived for less than a day. The descent of the nation into tragicomic turmoil has caused widespread alarm and allowed Mr. Macron’s chief rival, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, to deplore a “desperate, pathetic spectacle.”
She wasn’t alone in her censure, as a torrent of criticism met Mr. Macron’s choice. Mr. Lecornu will restart his efforts to form a government in a country in a state of severe institutional crisis, tethered to a president who after more than eight years in power has never been so isolated or scorned.
“Lecornu II is a bad joke, a democratic ignominy and a humiliation for the French people,” said Jordan Bardella, the popular president of Ms. Le Pen’s anti-immigrant National Rally party. She wants Mr. Macron to dissolve a deadlocked Parliament and call legislative elections in which her party could well gain enough seats to form a government.
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