Something important was missing when France’s prime minister Élisabeth Borne presented her road map aimed at helping the government move past the battle over its unpopular increase to the retirement age.

Absent from the 35-page action list was a long-promised draft law on immigration that president Emmanuel Macron had only days earlier said was coming.

“The fight against illegal immigration is a government priority . . . but today there is no majority in parliament for such a law,” Borne said last week. “Now is not the time to start a debate over a bill that could divide the French.”

The fate of the thrice-delayed immigration bill — which was to pair harsher policies to boost deportations with softer ones to make it easier to recruit immigrant workers to address labour shortages — is emblematic of the challenges facing Borne’s government following enactment of the unpopular pensions law.

The prime minister admitted that discussions to win support from the conservative Les Républicains (LR) on immigration reform had failed, forcing her to delay the issue until autumn.

Macron’s centrist alliance lacks a parliamentary majority and so needs allies to pass laws, yet both Borne’s negotiating hand and her relationship with the president have been weakened by the calamitous pensions debate. She spent months courting LR leaders, but failed to secure their support, forcing the government to ram the pensions law through without a vote using special constitutional powers.

The political cost of using the 49.3 constitutional clause was high: it hardened opposition both among protesters in the streets and also in parliament, where few opposition legislators are now inclined to help Macron or the government.

Turning the page is proving difficult as labour unions continue to flex their muscles, such as by holding massive demonstrations all over the country to commemorate Labour Day on Monday.

In mid-April, Macron promised a new “100 day” action plan to help heal France from the acrimonious pensions fight and tasked Borne to again seek allies in parliament. But her talks with opposition parties have proven largely fruitless.

Borne decided to set the immigration issue aside because she was wary of relying on the 49.3 clause to pass it. The government can only use the tactic once per parliamentary session, excluding budget laws, and tempers are still running high among the public and in the National Assembly.

In an effort to calm the storm after using the 49.3 on pensions, Borne in March pledged not to use the power on non-budget laws. But she had to go back on that promise after the Élysée privately signalled its displeasure.

The friction has led to speculation that Borne will not be in her job much longer. It is a timeworn tradition for presidents of France to use their prime ministers as scapegoats, so replacing Borne would be a classic way to seek to move on from the pensions fight.

The Élysée Palace has signalled that a government reshuffle is not imminent given that Macron laid out the “100 day” plan and promised to report back on progress in his Bastille Day speech in July. Macron has also said in recent interviews that the prime minister still has his “trust”.

Marc Ferracci, a politician from Macron’s Renaissance party who is close to the president, said he did not think that a government reshuffle was the answer. “I am not sure who else would do better than Borne has done given the difficult context,” he said. “She’s had a tough period but she can still come back if she can prove she can get a few laws voted through.”

But Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst at consultancy Eurasia Group, reckons that Macron will need a reshuffle to regain momentum. “I remain of the view that Borne’s time is up — Macron will need to reset his government and will need someone with a stronger centre-right political identity in order to do that,” Rahman said.

Borne’s government has managed to cobble together majorities to notch some legislative wins in the past year. About 25 laws have been passed, including on polices that relied on support from the left, such as promoting renewable energy, and others from the right, such as cutting red tape on nuclear energy projects.

Whether such an issue-by-issue approach can work after the pensions battle remains to be seen. Rating agency Fitch on Friday cited the risk of political paralysis as a reason for downgrading France’s credit rating.

The leftist Nupes alliance is seeking to demonise Macron and repeal the pensions law via a long-shot referendum. The government refuses to negotiate with the far-right led by Marine Le Pen, so as not to help her efforts to show that she can credibly govern.

In a scathing interview with Le Parisien, Le Pen slammed the government for letting the political crisis fester. “This is no longer a government, it’s just an administration. There is no leadership, they do not know where they are going, nor where they want to take the French people.” 

The government’s natural ally on economic and law and order issues should be the LR, but the lack of discipline of the conservative party’s 61 members of parliament was exposed when they split over whether to back the pension reform.

Although some in Macron’s camp have been advocating negotiating with LR to reach a governing pact, the party’s leaders have ruled that out for now. But a few figures in LR, such as former minister Xavier Bertrand, have signalled openness to a pact if Macron were to name someone from the party to be prime minister and to agree a new policy agenda.

“If nothing changes, our country is condemned to inertia,” Bertrand told Le Monde. “We need a new method and a new governing project.”