Some government policy statements, in which the prime minister lays out the government's program to Parliament, are more important than others. And Sébastien Lecornu's speech on Tuesday, October 14, at the Assemblée Nationale, was absolutely decisive. Had a single word been omitted, his government would almost certainly have lost a vote of no confidence two days later, likely prompting President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the Assemblée and send its members back to the voters.

In the chamber, some lawmakers were curious to see "which Lecornu" they would get on Tuesday. Would it be the one who, during the transfer of power, promised "ruptures," or the one who "spent three hours at the Elysée to assemble the government," wondered a former minister? They got the prime minister of rupture: Lecornu accepted a concession on the flagship reform of Macron's second term and proposed to "share power with Parliament," a sharp break from the president's style.

Some 20 minutes into the speech, Lecornu uttered the magic words: He would, as the Socialists were demanding, "suspend" the deeply unpopular 2023 pension reform until the 2027 presidential election. "The Assemblée wanted to debate pensions again: It will do so and every lawmaker will defend their views," promised Lecornu, who, just weeks earlier, had feared that such a move could alarm financial markets. But two and a half years after the reform was enacted, "We're not autistic, we can see that it is not accepted," explained, somewhat awkwardly, Jean-Pierre Farandou, the new minister for labor and solidarity, on France 2 television Tuesday night. (Farandou later apologized for using the word "autistic.")

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