Shades of France's notorious Third Republic! The latest French government has been summarily dismissed after only six painful months. It was certainly time for a change.
President François Hollande's poll ratings have plumbed new depths at 17 percent, while Prime Minister Manuel Valls had lost nine percentage points in one month, down to 36 percent. With his usual indecision, the president has instructed Valls to go back and form a new government to carry on the same policies — the third in the space of one year — but excluding the troublemakers who provoked this crisis.
The principal culprit is ex-economy minister Arnaud Montebourg, who last weekend proclaimed irresolvable differences with the president's economic policies and explicitly blamed Germany for France's "descent into hell."