On 21 March Mollet had scraped by with 221 votes to 188, with 110 abstentions, but he was living on borrowed time. Since Suez the Communists had withdrawn support from Mollet’s Socialist coalition, and in May they were joined by the Right in attacking the government on the acute inflation that gripped France. (“The French”, commented Mollet bitterly, “have the most stupid Right in the world.”) For the first four months of 1957 the national deficit had risen to three times the total for the whole of 1955, and to meet it the government was forced to introduce such unpopular measures as an increase in the price of petrol and postage, and a thirty per cent surtax on dividends. Defending his economic policy at his thirty-fourth vote of confidence on 21 May, Mollet went down with 250 votes to 213 and seventy abstentions. With him departed the last chance of stable government under the Fourth Republic.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 748