France may be the world’s premier purveyor of paradox. How else to account for the most popular candidate for the post of prime minister being the one who just resigned from it. It might be his youthful looks and energy. Or the fact that he showed some spine by telling President Macron to take a hike. In any event, Gabriel Attal appears to be the toast de la ville.

According to a new poll conducted by Harris Interactive and published in the French magazine Challenges, 40 percent of the French surveyed consider the 35-year-old Mr. Attal to be “a good prime minister.” That is despite the fact he served a mere seven months in office, tendering his resignation as a measure of his disapproval of Mr. Macron’s now infamous decision in June to dissolve France’s parliament and call for snap elections. 

Mr. Attal edged out the head of the staunchly conservative National Rally, Jordan Bardella, who in the interval between the first and second rounds of the snap vote looked like a contender for the prime minister’s job (he missed by a percentage point). Mr. Attal may have gotten a boost by taking the path of least resistance. The poll found that he received the support of 76 percent of the center-right Les Républicains party. 

Mr. Attal’s resignation leaves Mr. Bardella waiting in the wings. The likelihood that President Macron would appoint as prime minister someone whose stated policy goals are totally at odds with his own neoliberal ideas is hard to conceive. Yet Mr. Attal, for his part,  appears to have no intention of tossing his hat back into the ring. 

More telling is the setback suffered by the left-wing coalition called the New Popular Front. Its chosen contender for the prime ministerial role is Lucie Castets. The senior civil servant garnered only 17 percent of positive opinions in the poll and  40 percent  of French people surveyed even say they “don’t know enough [about her] to say anything.”

So the fate of the Fifth Republic, which President Macron through his procrastination is weakening. The rising popularity of an outgoing prime minister would be almost farcical were it not for the urgency of France getting its house in order. Among other problems is the the public debt — which led to the undoing of the monarchy during the French Revolution — is soaring. 

The state budget for 2025 needs to be hammered out before October. The French government is bound by Brussels to show that it can slash its debt-to-GDP ratio to 60 percent from the current 111 percent. Will it be able to do that ? A prolonged caretaker government and endless rounds of political infighting do not augur well. 

Madame Castets is scheduled to meet with Monsieur  Macron at the Élysée Palace on Friday to make her case for why should be made prime minister. She will not, however, have the last word, because on Monday Mr. Bardella along with the head of the National Rally’s coalition in parliament, Marine Le Pen, are also scheduled to meet with President Macron. After these highly anticipated tête-à-têtes, it will be for him to make the next move.