Waiting two months for a new prime minister may be standard procedure for the Belgians, Dutch, Germans or Italians, inured to extended coalition negotiations, but to the French 50 days has seemed like an insufferable eternity. This was not the way things were supposed to be in the Fifth Republic, with a constitution framed in 1958 to deliver stable parliamentary majorities for a powerful president, Charles de Gaulle. Le général must be spinning in his grave.

His distant successor in the Élysée Palace, Emmanuel Macron, spent all summer dithering over a way out of the mess he created himself when he dissolved the national assembly and called a snap election in June. The option he finally chose on Thursday, bringing Michel Barnier, a conservative Gaullist former European commissioner, foreign minister and Brexit negotiator, out of retirement at 73 to lead a government, seems unlikely to offer a stable solution.

Barnier, whose Les Républicains (LR) party finished a distant fourth in the election with just 47 of the 577 parliamentary seats, has a reputation as a consensus builder and a safe, if unimaginative, pair of hands. But his survival in government will depend entirely on the goodwill of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN). That makes her the kingmaker and allows her to pull the plug on Barnier, and perhaps on Macron, whenever it suits her to back a no-confidence vote.

When he dissolved parliament in June, Macron said he wanted the electorate’s “clarification” after the RN surged to first place in European parliament elections. Instead, voters delivered a hung parliament with the leftwing New Popular Front (NFP) – an alliance of socialists, greens, communists and radical leftists –........

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