Even if the current French government doesn’t collapse this week, Michel Barnier’s brush with a no-confidence vote testifies loudly to the impossibility of governing while beholden to France’s far-right.

As discussed here at some length last week, Emmanuel Macron’s bid to thwart Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella in snap legislative elections earlier this year came full circle pretty quickly: The French left‘s strong showing in the vote meant Macron’s pick for prime minister, Barnier, would likely fall victim to perpetual blackmail by the far-right. That’s precisely where Barnier finds himself now.

In the “normal” course of business, the French prime minister would resort to a constitutional end-around to pass a finance bill, but the left is threatening a no-confidence vote if Barnier goes that route. He needs Le Pen’s bloc to kill that vote, and she’s willing, but only if the government agrees to the far-right’s demands.

Barnier, no stranger to fraught negotiations, caved on one such demand (dropping a tax hike on electricity), but Le Pen and Bardella, her protégé, want a lot more, not all of which is unreasonable, but most of which is expensive. As of this writing, the government wasn’t inclined to offer further concessions to secure Le Pen’s de facto veto of the no-confidence motion.

On Monday, Bardella complained that the right’s been “ignored and scorned for several months,” a contention that isn’t true, or at least not the “ignored” part, and said that barring “a last minute miracle,” he and Le Pen would support the bid to topple Barnier.

The euro wasn’t amused. Monday’s slide added to the common currency’s woes. If in fact Barnier’s toppled, that’ll add still more pressure, fueling the parity discussion among FX traders.

Needless to say, just about the last thing France needs right now, which is to say at a time when the country’s finances are a sore spot among ratings agencies and market participants, is for the nation’s political extremes to unite in a bid to collapse the government over a budget.

There’s nothing “wrong,” by the way, with refusing to support a finance bill. But thwarting the mechanism by which a prime minister can pass one by toppling the government is indicative of the sort of chaos that goes along with the collapse of consensus and the implosion of the political center across the Western world.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Finance Minister Antoine Armand, a member of Macron’s movement, boldly declared that the French government “won’t be blackmailed.” Well, guess what Antoine? You’re being blackmailed right now.