Do we like them?

Do we like Sébastien Lecornu?

Our score: 6 out of 10. A thin harm record apart from his 2012 stance on same-sex marriage, no proven good-person problems, and not much real good to point to yet.

Sébastien Lecornu is the French prime minister who got the job twice in a month. Macron named him in September 2025 when he was defence minister, after François Bayrou's government fell. He quit after about 27 days, then Macron handed him the job back within days.

His first political fight explains why LGBTQ+ readers might wince. Reporting at his appointment recalled that, campaigning for mayor of Vernon in 2012, he opposed opening marriage to same-sex couples, arguing a family is built between a man and a woman. Left-wing politicians and LGBTQ+ advocates jumped on it, and a Green deputy slammed him over it.

On the harm test, that 2012 stance is the main mark we could find, and it is more than a decade old, from before same-sex marriage became law in France. We found no recent campaigning against trans people or fresh anti-LGBTQ+ words, nothing on the climate (he pushed an energy plan out to 2035) and no conspiracy talk or dodgy company. Honest gap: we didn't find his current position on assisted reproduction, so an asterisk, not a gold star.

The rest of his time has been survival politics. In October 2025 he proposed suspending the 2023 pension reform until the next presidential election and said he'd stop using the 49.3 special power to save his government. He survived a no-confidence vote that month.

Then the budget bit back. In January 2026 he forced budget measures through parliament without a full vote and survived two more no-confidence motions. In February he survived two censure motions over his energy roadmap to 2035.

Lately he's been playing the statesman. In September 2026 he announced more financial help for New Caledonia, tied to promised reforms. The Italian paper Il Foglio reported in July that talk of him as Macron's successor keeps growing, while he denies being a candidate.