Lonely at the top? Macron's support in parliament erodes

THE DEBATE © France 24 screengrab

Seventeen left-leaning dissidents inside French President Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party are forming a breakaway voting bloc at the National Assembly. The shock move announced on Tuesday leaves Macron one seat shy of an outright majority. Because of the support of centrists, the party defections are hardly expected to bring down the government but it does chisel away at its ability to pursue reforms in the two years remaining before the next presidential poll.

So why has Macron just lost his majority in parliament? François Picard's FRANCE 24 panel unpacks Macron's method during the coronavirus pandemic and asks about a system where the president's outsized power seems to always turn the highest office in the land into a political lightning rod.