Both Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) and the Nupes alliance of leftist parties had proposed motions of no confidence in the government, in protest over its handling of the budget debates.

With neither party willing to support each other, there seemed no chance of either bill passing, but on Monday afternoon Le Pen announced that her party would support the Nupes bill. However their combined vote was 239 MPs – short of the 289 required to bring down the government.

Two other motions of no confidence – another on the budget proposed by RN alone and one on the social security bill proposed by Nupes – were also defeated.

The government therefore lives to fight another day and the 2023 budget is officially adopted.

The centre-right party Les Républicains declined to support any of the votes, but their leader Olivier Marleix did not rule it out in future, telling Radio J: “If one day we have to vote on a motion of no-confidence, it will be the one we choose to file. And we do not rule out doing so.”

If Nupes, Rassemblement National and Les Républicains all joined together in voting for a no-confidence bill, they would likely have enough votes for it to pass.

Macron has already said that if a no-confidence vote passes, he will dissolve parliament and call new parliamentary elections.

A no-confidence vote does not directly threaten Macron’s position as president, but would leave him effectively unable to govern until new elections were called. At present his LREM group is the largest group in the parliament, but lacks an overall majority.

Because of this lack of majority Borne was unable to get the 2023 budget passed, and so used a constitutional tool known as Article 49.3 in order to force it through the blocked parliament. The motions of no confidence were called in response to the use of this power.