Sartre once said that "words are loaded pistols." When Sébastien Lecornu promised a "rupture," a clean break in both substance and style, upon taking office as France's prime minister, he fired the first shot. But did he, on September 10, fully grasp the scope of this commitment? While such a pledge makes it possible to break from the past, it also requires that promise to be honored in the future. As a slogan, "rupture" is a striking one for any ambitious newcomer, but it comes back like a boomerang if not followed through on.

The weight of the word chosen by the new prime minister did not escape the Elysée Palace, which was quick to set boundaries: The rupture Lecornu promised was only to be understood in relation to his predecessor, François Bayrou, and not in any way to President Emmanuel Macron.

A rupture in substance – the most difficult – was thus limited from the outset. The former defense minister, tasked by the president with "consulting the political forces represented in Parliament in order to adopt a budget," spent a month working under Macron's close supervision. The president, at an all-time low in the polls and isolated at the Elysée, stayed out of the public spotlight, pretending to let the prime minister maneuver freely. But however much Lecornu insisted he was "free because loyal," any departure from the "fundamentals" of Macronism was out of the question.

The country's financial situation also drastically reduced the prime minister's room for maneuver, just as it had for his two predecessors, Michel Barnier and Bayrou. In a country where public debt exceeds €3.4 trillion (115.6% of gross domestic product), Lecornu warned in his "government roadmap" sent to the centrist and conservative governing parties that "the effort will have to focus primarily on reducing public spending." Markets were watching France, as was the European Commission. While opposition parties freely ignored the budgetary context, Lecornu's budget was almost certain to resemble Bayrou's and could in no way constitute a rupture – neither with his predecessors' budgets nor with the president's political line.

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