Recently, Jean Castex read the Memoirs of Catherine Nay. What a joke political history is! Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, outgoing president, favorite in the polls until the first months of 1981, suddenly swept away by the socialist François Mitterrand, this is an episode that should suggest caution and humility to candidates in a hurry. “It’s a horse race, those who leave first rarely pass the guard of honor”, theorized the former Prime Minister. Moreover, he laughs frankly when his friends report to him the intentions that some attribute to him. Don’t tell Jean Castex that he will be a candidate in 2027, he finds that “irrelevant”, but above all… too soon. Do not tell the president more that Jean Castex is casually building an anti-Macron candidacy, he believes him to be faithful and loyal. The worst part is that he is. But that does not prevent him from laying small pebbles which are as many stones in the garden of the Head of State. Who knows, maybe this will allow him to move forward without getting too lost on the still long path leading to 2027.
It’s curious, this mania of Emmanuel Macron to offend with his heads of government when he separates from them. Nothing to do here with Edouard Philippe, of course, whose flight remained across the throat of the one who put him on the take-off runway. Between Emmanuel Macron and Jean Castex, if the good mood has remained there, strategic differences have accumulated. They start in April 2022. Not only does Le Pradéen think that Catherine Vautrin at Matignon would be a better choice than Elisabeth Borne to send a message to voters marked by the ever-widening rift between the elites and the country, but he is convinced that he – even must quickly pack up. It did not escape him that the re-election of the outgoing president had aroused very moderate enthusiasm. We must therefore mark the change, the beginning of a new era. So he says it, he repeats it to Emmanuel Macron, who turns a deaf ear.
His perplexity grows when he observes the legislative campaign, or rather the absence of legislative campaign. “Bullshit”, he blurts out in front of a friend with the accent that contributed to his glory, and, on arrival, a “slow poison” which will inconvenience Emmanuel Macron throughout the five-year term: a relative majority. With, moreover, a lesson that will have escaped no one: not to campaign is to send a message contempt, at best indifference, to citizens. It’s telling them, while they’re waiting to be courted: you don’t interest me. Jean Castex has spotted it for a long time even if he refrains from saying it, there lies the weak point of this president. He will have to do the exact opposite, he has even started to do the exact opposite. “In February, he arrived alone at the Agricultural Show and little by little people gathered around him”, says an elected official, surprised by the fervor aroused. The former Pradéen is not insensitive, it must be admitted, to this kind of reception, he who fundamentally believes in two virtues in politics, of which we will agree that they are not the alpha and the omega of macronism: proximity, authenticity.
A book project on his two years at Matignon
Jean Castex then moves on, still silent, to a form of amazement at the turn taken by the five-year term. To reach out to the right, did you really have to go and find a leftist woman for Matignon? Then, is it to know the country well… It leans rather to the right, doesn’t it? As for this story of a new majority, of a government pact, call it what you want, the initiative leaves the defender of the Fifth Republic, Castex, skeptical. Of course, it is always possible to recreate majorities, to invent an alliance with Les Républicains, but they will always have the vice of not having been submitted beforehand to the approval of the people. Slight gash in the democratic contract.
What if it all ends badly, as a former president has predicted for six years? Jean-Luc Mélenchon/Marine Le Pen in the second round in 2027, nothing is impossible after all. The right is crestfallen, and, more seriously, voters’ mistrust of their political leaders is only growing. From his exchanges with the French, in Prades or Paris, the new boss of the RATP retains the widespread conviction among his fellow citizens of being led by incompetents or liars. Obviously, he is well placed to perceive that the reality is proving infinitely more complicated, he thinks he was one of the prime ministers who knew the state best, its flaws and shortcomings, and he also knows that nothing will change as long as that the many obstacles to public action will persist. When the time comes, he will write what he observed from the Matignon window. He said it in his own words to his close friends: “It will be necessary that one day, for the sake of accounting to my fellow citizens for the exercise of a charge which concerns the affairs of the country, I testify to the management of the Covid, of what happened, of what I had to do or live for two years…” His notebooks filled with notes are just waiting for the blank pages of his diary. By 2027, can we hope for a revolution to put an end to public impotence? His knowledge of the workings of public action and his lucidity compel him to admit that the probability is negligible.
“After the Californian HRD, here is the Third Republic atmosphere institute”
So, to prevent the installation of the National Rally at the Elysee Palace in the next presidential election, he will have to resolve to do a little “poloche”, according to the favorite expression of his Le Havre predecessor at Matignon. Find the means for a single candidacy, for example, for the right and the current presidential majority. Why not him? Some in his entourage – and among those who wish harm to other putative majority candidates – dream gently of seeing him become the figurehead of a “sacred Renaissance-Les Républicains union”. The opposite of Emmanuel Macron and his solitary epic in 2017, therefore. There is still a little way to go. Castex would, moreover, have legitimacy, insists one of his relatives; his story, that of a rural mayor who worked alongside Nicolas Sarkozy and then Emmanuel Macron, may seem unifying. And its political positioning, more local than start-up nation, would, perhaps, have the merit of seducing voters tempted by Marine Le Pen. “After the Californian HRD, here is the institute ‘Third Republic atmosphere close to farmers, fishermen and manual trades’, laughs the same.
Enough ramblings and dreams. The days of Jean Castex are less beautiful than his nights, all occupied by the malfunctions of the Paris metro, the hassle of the buses, the Olympic Games which are looming, the end of the turnstiles… And by some political ulterior motives too, at the one who , well, willingly underlines the importance of social dialogue in his company… The presence, at the beginning of March, of Renaissance deputies among the signatories of a platform asking to suspend the RATP’s competition (between the names of Anne Hidalgo, elected LFI, communists and environmentalists) caused a stir. “It’s not Renaissance, it’s Castex who asked his friends to weigh in,” whispered some. Could this be the beginnings of pro-Castex influencers (a concept in itself) in the National Assembly?
It was almost three years ago. The first time that Jean Castex, in all discretion, sees the Head of State with a view to an appointment at Matignon, he enters the office with a firm idea: to refuse the slightest ministerial portfolio. He remains scalded by the reaction of part of the macronie when his name was considered to replace Gérard Collomb in Beauvau, in the fall of 2018: he had been doomed to loathing. One becomes Prime Minister by the operation of the Holy Spirit – in this case, article 8 of the tables of the law. But that’s not how you are elected President of the Republic, you need troops, money, projects, scars too. God will recognize his own.