France in fresh political crisis as PM Lecornu quits after 26 days
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
France is facing further political chaos after the country's latest prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, resigned after just 26 days in the role. We'll hear from a French parliamentarian with the right-of centre party, Les Républicains - and we'll get the long view on French politics from veteran French journalist Christine Ockrent.
Also - as indirect talks begin between Hamas and Israeli delegations over the US-led peace plan for Gaza, we'll hear from an American go-between who knows the Hamas negotiators; and we look at what the appointment of Bari Weiss at CBS News says about the political weather surrounding journalism in the US.
(Photo: French outgoing Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, who presented his government's resignation to the French president this morning, leaves after he delivered a statement at the Hotel Matignon in Paris, France, October 6, 2025. Credit: REUTERS/Stephane Mahe)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.5 | Hello and welcome to Newsare. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:17.1 | We're going to begin in France, where all the headlines seem to use a combination of the same words, turmoil, crisis and chaos. |
| 0:25.7 | To give you just the most recent illustration of the political upheaval there, hours after the Prime Minister Sebastian Le Cornoe quit today, and he resigned only 26 days after being appointed, Mr. Le Corneux accepted a request from his |
| 0:40.7 | President, Emmanuel Macron, to start work on a plan to stabilise the country. Oh, and to get it |
| 0:46.8 | ready by Wednesday evening. It was only on Sunday evening, so last night, Paris time, that Mr. |
| 0:53.0 | Le Corneux had presented his new cabinet of ministers, |
| 0:56.4 | one which was met with an absolute gale of criticism from opposition parties, leading to his |
| 1:02.3 | resignation this morning. The briefest of recaps, after President Macron called snap |
| 1:07.6 | parliamentary elections last year, the National Assembly had found itself |
| 1:11.1 | broken into three main blocks, the far left, the centre, along with the centre right and centre |
| 1:17.2 | left, and the far right. And that in turn led to three Prime Minister's coming and going, |
| 1:24.0 | and France's budget crisis deepening. Sebastian Chenu is vice president of the hard right national rally. |
| 1:31.6 | For his party, he says there's only one answer, and that is holding fresh elections. |
| 1:37.6 | The French are a politically minded people. |
| 1:40.8 | They've seen what happens with a national assembly that is gridlocked, where there is no |
| 1:45.1 | majority. And we are confident that the French people can grant a majority. We hope this majority |
| 1:51.2 | will be that of the national rally, giving a majority to our party or, in any case, a coalition. |
| 1:57.7 | The view from the hard right. Let's hear from one of the other protagonists in all this. |
| 2:01.9 | Rafael Le Schellenbergier is a member of the gridlocked National Assembly. He's with the right |
| 2:08.0 | of centre party Les Republicans. What's his view of the mess his country is in? |
| 2:15.0 | The fact is that we are now in France in a political crisis. We had no government |
... |
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