Let’s go back in time, in 1982. Denys Granier-Deferre made his first film, Let the big salaries raise your finger!, an oh so cynical dramatic comedy about managerial practices steeped in sadism. Jean Poiret, who portrays the boss of an insurance firm affected by the crisis, must make cuts in his workforce. Claiming a reward for good services rendered, he invites all his employees to his country house for a weekend to determine which of his executives, Daniel Auteuil among others, he will have to make redundant. Natural selection will ultimately play out… musical chairs. In front of his dumbfounded and refractory employees, the director ends up letting them go, without trembling: “Reread your letters of engagement, I have absolutely all the rights!”
This Tuesday evening at the Elysée, there are not even any tests; no musical chairs, no messing around, no duck fishing. Emmanuel Macron has invited all of his ministers, deputy ministers and secretaries of state, as well as their spouses, to dine at the Palace on the eve of the summer holidays. However, the Prime Minister’s entourage indicated on Monday evening that “adjustments” would be made during the week. Among them, therefore, some will be thanked in a few days, a few hours perhaps, thanks to the reorganization desired by the two heads of state. “It’s baroque…”, stings a regular interlocutor of the Head of State. At least. Chin!
The presidential festivities have something to question the guests, who received their invitation cards on Monday morning. The sacrificed – who do not know it yet – mingle with the unshakeable sure of their maintenance. The anxious are invited to toast in honor of a fruitful year. Within the executive, we speak of “perverse dinner”, “sadism” or even “dinner of idiots”: “I do not know who will write the managerial chronicle of this five-year term, but there is really something to do on it”, slips a minister at the end of this “totally improbable evening”. In any case, there is at least one cause for satisfaction in the garden: “There were enough chairs for everyone”, is content to reply another member of the government. This one will only add four little more words: “All this drives me to despair.” Laconic. Lapidary.
Meeting was given at 8:30 p.m. in the courtyard of the Château. Previously, for an hour, Elisabeth Borne and Emmanuel Macron met in the office of the Head of State, presumably to refine the future government architecture. The guests appear in dribs and drabs, some with their half, like the Secretary of State for Childhood Charlotte Caubel who arrived on the arm of the CEO of Carrefour Alexandre Bompard; or the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti, accompanied by the Canadian singer Isabelle Boulay, whose boss of Bercy Bruno Le Maire was unaware of everything despite his broad artistic culture, which did not fail to amuse some of his comrades… But at the Elysée, we have a sense of welcome and homage: the artist had the right to hear several of his pieces played in the park of the Château.
It’s time for an aperitif but also for a fool’s game. Even if “everyone is obviously quite worried”, concedes a minister close to the president, all these little people have put on their most beautiful smile on the face of it, even if the supporters of Elisabeth Borne are making the little naughty noise that Gérald Darmanin, claiming disappointed at Matignon, “was the face” … Even when sounded The Corons by Pierre Bachelet! On the impeccably mowed lawn, we try to hide the issue of the upcoming deadline. Were some only warned, out of elegance, of their eviction from the government before attacking the cold buffet? “Everyone is there and nobody knows anything!”, swore a minister at the start of the evening. We chain the “small-talk”, “we talk about the rain and the good weather and we ask what the others are doing for the holidays”, sweeps a guest. Politics and its cruelty seem far away… However, we do not forget to congratulate Eric Dupond-Moretti for the adoption, the same afternoon, of his bill to increase the means of justice in the Assembly, by 388 votes to 111.
Elisabeth Borne has already been surrounded by her future ex-team for a quarter of an hour now, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron appear around 9 p.m. in the Elysée garden. The President of the Republic does not waste time to address the members of the government, there is an abscess to burst before sitting down to eat. “In a past life, I was in your place and I know that these moments are never pleasant”, he grants them in the preamble, before inviting them to “take a lot of distance” with the vagaries of a ministerial life. Easier to say when you are at the top of the pyramid than to hear when you know you are threatened with leaving it definitively. For the lucky ones – who make up the majority of the assembly – the Head of State also mentioned the complicated back-to-school period which is looming, studded with “decisive reforms” to be carried out and no doubt just as politically sensitive, because by then the context of relative majority will not have changed. “Our political life will not be simplified”, he assured: his Prime Minister will have to confront the problem, for the time being insoluble, called “immigration bill”, which Les Républicains still do not want to hear about. And the maintenance of Elisabeth Borne at Matignon has already, for a handful of ministers, raised the question of the vote on the 2024 Budget and a possible motion of censure adopted in the fall…
Connemara Lakes succeeds Special partners which succeeds The urge to want… This evening, which smacks of the atmosphere of a business school BDE and which will end around midnight, is described by some ministers – confident about their future – as “warm” and “good atmosphere”. We bet that others left in the taxi as worried as when they arrived. No one wants to hear from the mouths of Emmanuel Macron, Elisabeth Borne or Alexis Kohler, where through the words of a press release sent to AFP, the words of Isabelle Boulay which resounded a few hours earlier in the sound system of the Château: “I don’t know how to love you anymore, or how to keep you.”