gotchanewsdaily.com 
After all, if he could run rings round the British in Brexit negotiations, he could surely pull off one final legendary coup, assuage fears about the debt bomb, and steady the ship for President Emmanuel Macron.
But it was not to be. Barnier is expected to be ousted in a no-confidence vote on Wednesday after failing to get Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally party to sign off on a slimmed-down budget to wrestle the country’s finances back in line.
After nearly three months of tacit support for the government, the National Rally is now set to join forces with the left-wing New Popular Front coalition and bring the government down, Barnier’s prescription of tax hikes and public spending cuts having proved indigestible.
The downfall is expected to be brutal. If he is booted out, Barnier will become the first prime minister to be ousted since 1962 and will leave his post with his reputation tainted.
“In France, he blundered in a big way,” said Gaspard Gantzer, a former Élysée advisor under former President François Hollande. “I don’t know in what world he thought he would be able to negotiate with the far right, an extremist party.”
The Barnier effect
From the moment he was appointed it was clear Barnier had been handed an impossible mission, given the intense divisions in French politics.
