This second five-year term like no other is far from over, yet 2027 and its cohort of putative candidates are already moving forward. This last reshuffle with Gabriel Attal at its head – and which puts Rachida Dati back in the saddle – is a new turning point. Behind the scenes, some are learning to dodge tripping, others are familiarizing themselves with the art of conspiracy, in short, everyone is preparing for the post-Emmanuel Macron era with rigor and determination. The political service of L’Express offers to help you follow, thanks to a weekly meeting on our website, the progress of these ambitious people who hope to climb, quickly and without injury, the steps of power.
The Davos surprise
He almost never accompanies the president on his trips and yet, on Wednesday January 17, he was with Emmanuel Macron in Davos. The Secretary General of the Elysée, Alexis Kohler, was on the trip to Switzerland. “The Forum made it possible to recognize all the benefits of France’s economic policy, it is a subject which is particularly close to his heart,” notes a close friend of the Head of State.
At the RN, the obsession with specialization
Surprise question! For the second year, this is the evaluation among the Frontist deputies. The far-right parliamentarians, with the exception of Marine Le Pen, were interviewed by the boss’s brother-in-law and MEP Philippe Olivier. The idea: to push each of the RN parliamentarians into a path of specialization so that the party can have a small pool of elected officials capable of expressing themselves intelligently in a particular area. And hope, finally, to silence the evil tongues who persist in saying that the frontists are not working.
The phone calls that Macron did not make
Stéphane Séjourné, at the Quai d’Orsay, is the last-minute minister in the Attal government. The outgoing Catherine Colonna did not receive a call from the president, nor did Rima Abdul Malak: disembarked from Culture, Emmanuel Macron’s former advisor at the Elysée confided that the head of state hadn’t made a single phone call to him.
Vautrin wants to have his say
“Catherine Vautrin has her personality, she does not necessarily appreciate that some people appoint themselves as her delegate ministers, she will have her say. Besides, she already chooses their future chiefs of staff herself,” laughs one member of the government. An executive advisor details: “Vautrin undoubtedly has other ideas than Agnès Pannier-Runacher. And she knows that her deputy chiefs of staff will undoubtedly be the chiefs of staff of her delegated ministers…”
Right-left, the calculation that annoys the president
Emmanuel Macron hates that ministers are listed according to their political origin – eight members of the Attal government come from LR: “Why don’t they count me as coming from the left, then? And Gabriel Attal [ex-PS] ? And Stéphane Séjourné [ex-PS] ? And Eric Dupond-Moretti? And Sylvie Retailleau?” The president considers more than ever that the right-left divide is irrelevant…
The (almost) return of the Chirac-Sarkozy war
The appointment of Rachida Dati to the Ministry of Culture and the announcement, without delay, of her candidacy for the 2026 municipal elections in Paris have many consequences… And in particular the reawakening of an old war between Chiraquians and Sarkozysts that some thought extinguished over time. The shot was fired by François Baroin – quasi-spiritual son of “the great Jacques” – who criticized Dati for having gone “on board the Titanic“. Response to the vitriol of the interested party: “Baroin is an heir […] which, at decisive moments, slipped away. I have no lessons to learn.” But, behind the scenes, the Parisian right is on the verge of dividing according to the same logic as at the time. If followers of Sarkozy leader Rachida Dati make up a third of the group Change Paris, there are at least as many historic Chiracians, including Francis Szpiner. “It is no longer the City Hall, it is the antechamber of the morgue,” Sarkozy said one day in 1994, to the address of Chirac, then mayor of Paris. LR has definitely not finished with the ghosts of its past.
LFI towards the municipal elections “swords drawn” (and too bad for Nupes)
While Jean-Luc Mélenchon continues his travels abroad (after Morocco in October, the left-wing leader went to Beirut, Lebanon, on January 16), his rebellious flock continues to prepare the ground. “Do better,” he told them, and they listen to him religiously. Or rather, they intend to do “more”. If they keep an eye on the European elections, of course, it is the municipal elections that they are watching avidly. “We will approach this election with a spirit of conquest, swords drawn,” assures Paul Vannier, LFI deputy and “Mr. Elections” of the movement. In 2020, in the last municipal elections, Mélenchon preferred to step over them, but he now wishes “[s]”anchor.” There is no question for them of “making last-minute tinkering” with ecologists or socialists, already well established in a number of cities. “We will not come to the aid of local barons,” adds Vannier. And in the sight of the rebels, in addition to Toulouse, as reported by L’Express at the beginning of October, municipalities already in the hands of the left: Strasbourg (LE-EELV), Nantes (PS), Rennes (PS), Lille (PS), or Montpellier ( PS). Enough to calm relations between the “partners” of the late Nupes… One year before the presidential election, no quarter!
The Parisian MoDem collateral victim of the Oudéa-Castéra controversy
In Macronie, among those who feel a bit uncomfortable with the Oudéa-Castéra controversy, there is one who is particularly embarrassed: the deputy (MoDem) for the 11th constituency of Paris, Maud Gatel. And for good reason: the Littré school, where the future Minister of Education had – very temporarily – placed her eldest son and whose numerous absences of his teachers she blamed, is in her stronghold. Worse, last December, during the district’s victory ceremony, Maud Gatel notably rewarded, in the education category, the director of the Littré nursery school!
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