Francois Holland’s Economy Minister calls out the German austerity fetish, and in response, he reshuffles his cabinet to give him the boot:

French president François Hollande took the biggest gamble of his two-year-old presidency on Monday by ordering his reformist prime minister to form a new government which will exclude Socialist dissidents demanding an end to economic austerity policies dictated by Germany.

Casting off his characteristic indecision, Hollande agreed to prime minister Manuel Valls’s offer to dissolve the cabinet amid a political crisis triggered by the country’s outspoken economy minister.

The dissolution of the cabinet allows Hollande to form a new government without dissenting voices.

In a defiant farewell speech at the economy ministry, Arnaud Montebourg, said the austerity drive in France and Europe was a “financial absurdity,” and accused Hollande and Valls of ignoring his pleas for a “moderate and balanced” alternative.

Less than an hour after he was called into Valls’s office for a 15-minute meeting, Montebourg said austerity-inspired tax increases had undermined purchasing power and has led to the rise of extremist parties.

Montebourg said the “incorrect” austerity policies followed by the European Central Bank and EU member states had “continued to mire the eurozone in recession and soon, deflation”. Education minister Benoît Hamon and culture minister Aurélie Filippetti also said that they would not take part in the new government.

Holland has decided that he has to throw in with Angela Merkel’s twisted morality play in the desperate hope for his own political survival, his popularity is currently at a Cheneyesque 17% (!) approval rating.

It’s not gonna work, austerity will continue to depress economies and stoke the political right.

So the next president of France is either going to be a Gaullist, or Marine Le Pen.^*

^*I think that I just threw up in my mouth.