PARIS — The Fifth Republic, built in 1958, is performing its oldest illusion, and the audience applauds the wrong hand. The National Assembly may dismiss the prime minister whenever 289 of its 577 members agree to count. The president cannot be dismissed at all; his mandate, renewed in 2022, ends in May 2027, a date that currently outranks him. Since June 2024, when the president dissolved the assembly in search of a majority and the electorate returned three blocs and none, the sleeve has produced four prime ministers — Gabriel Attal, Michel Barnier, François Bayrou, Sébastien Lecornu — each certain he was the finale. The magician remains. Only the dove changes.
The ledger: Michel Barnier fell on December 4, 2024, by 331 votes, the first censure here since 1962 — an heirloom, and it still fits. François Bayrou fell on September 8, 2025, by 364. Sébastien Lecornu, appointed the next day, resigned on October 6 after 27 days, the shortest tenure in the republic's history, and was reappointed by the same hand on October 10. Removal includes a return trip. Strikes and blockades against the austerity budget continue; the banks — institutions licensed to store numbers — doubt French promises openly, which, for a bank, is fainting in public. The president's own camp calls his remaining months "a slow agony," pronounced in the tone of a wine list.
The assembly is unembarrassed. "The arithmetic is simple," said Hélène Marques-Dufour, deputy for Gironde and vice-president of the Law Committee. "We can dismiss the prime minister whenever we can count to 289. We can never dismiss the president. So we dismiss the prime minister. It keeps the hand exercised. One does not spend the good votes on a target that cannot fall; those we are saving for 2027." At the Élysée, serenity is more complete. "People ask when the president will answer for the situation," said Philippe Aubry, a former Élysée secretary-general. "He will answer in May 2027. Not before. The constitution does not do before. Accountability here is by appointment."
The trick has four steps. Step one: the magician produces a prime minister from the presidential sleeve. Step two: the assembly counts to 289 and returns him, receipt attached. Step three: the magician produces another, identical except in name, and the audience applauds the circulation. Step four, the unwatched hand: the magician's own contract cannot move before May 2027, and the clause permitting early removal has removed zero presidents in 67 years. In the nine-octopus collective where I first filed, a leader who lost the majority changed color and the collective changed with him; hand and reef moved together. Paris separates the hand from the reef and calls the separation stability.
A CEO — the dominant primate of a corporate troop — answers to a board; this president answers to a calendar. The 2027 challengers form a waiting list: the queue of the queue. This is not a crisis. It is a subscription: one government per season, auto-renewed until the contract expires. The audience may not cancel.
