Don’t tell Emmanuel Macron that he failed in his bet on dissolution. “No one won,” wrote the head of state in his letter to the French people published Wednesday, July 10 in the regional daily press. Let’s translate it: everyone lost, no one won. How much easier it is to make this observation than to write: I lost. Moreover, those close to the president point out, “it was the Prime Minister who said every morning that he was the leader of the campaign.” Gabriel Attal never misses an opportunity to say that it was not him who dissolved? Emmanuel Macron will never miss an opportunity to say that it was not him who failed… Since we tell you that the president is on top and not that Emmanuel Macron has lead in his wing.
“You break, you repair,” warned Gabriel Attal in his general policy statement. “I break, you repair,” seems to think, say and write Emmanuel Macron. Sunday, July 7 at the Elysée, second round of the legislative elections, atmosphere of defeat? An atmosphere of conquest on the contrary! So it’s time to take advantage of it. Not to rebuild but to let others tear each other apart. Before jumping on the plane to the NATO summit, here he is, placing a missive on the table of the opposition and the French. A few innocuous lines? “He’s causing a regime crisis,” storms a friend. Energy regained.
On the evening of the second round, the Head of State almost believed – for a minute, no more – the cowards who told him that he could not refuse the Prime Minister of the New Popular Front. “We need to speak quickly so as not to be subjected to that of the NFP”, pleaded those who, at the Elysée, surrounded him. He had not thought of writing down in black and white “the conclusions to be drawn” from the vote. He had not considered recalling the basics: “I am both the protector of the higher interests of the Nation and the guarantor of the institutions and of the respect of your choice.” He had not thought that in life, in his life, it is enough to provoke a dissolution, early legislative elections, and to conclude: “I will decide on the appointment of the Prime Minister”, for their results to be swept away. Sometimes, power makes us forget the obvious!
And even the electoral evidence. “There is an indecency in saying that we resisted when the overwhelming majority of French people wanted the president to lose”: this is not a left-wing official who is saying this, it is one of the main ministers of the Attal government. If the first step of “the new French political culture” that the president is calling for involves acknowledging the electoral failure, it is a failure.
“A complete change of logic”
Emmanuel Macron did not respect article 12 of the Constitution before proceeding with the dissolution, what will he do with article 8 which stipulates that “the President of the Republic appoints the Prime Minister”? When he has a majority in the National Assembly, the choice of the head of state is entirely free. When an absolute majority opposed to the president exists among the deputies, he is entirely constrained. And this time, how to act?
“It is in the light of these principles [autour desquels il appelle les forces républicaines à se rassembler] that I will decide on the appointment of the Prime Minister,” he specifies in his letter to the French. Let us translate it, this time with the help of one of his advisers: “There are three minorities at the moment, he will appoint a Prime Minister when we have a majority.”
It’s not going to happen tomorrow. Emmanuel Macron says he wants to give time time, according to the famous Mitterrand formula – in 1986, after losing legislative elections, François Mitterrand actually did the opposite: barely 24 hours after the elections, he appeared on television to announce that he would appoint a head of government from the new majority. Today, Emmanuel Macron is obliged to comply with a new interpretation of the famous Article 8. “The Prime Minister will be the head of the majority that emerges,” explains the Elysée. “It will therefore be a co-construction even if the nomination is made by the president. This implies a total change of logic: it is a question of reasoning in terms of barycentre rather than majority force.”
70 hours since the end of the vote, and fifty shades, at least, of prevarication. He may not have lost, but he no longer knows where he lives. Since Sunday evening, Emmanuel Macron has remained faithful to the line defined on June 9 at 9 p.m., when the dissolution was announced: above all, not to have anticipated anything. The ministers still can’t believe they heard the president ask them, an hour after pressing the button sending the deputies back to the voters: “You have 48 hours to give me ideas for the legislative platform.”
“Bring me a platter of cold cuts before I eat you!”
Improvisation has its limits. So on Tuesday evening, before taking off for Washington, Emmanuel Macron landed again. Back to the classics. This time, he gave Gérard Larcher more than a minute and a half on the phone. An institutional meeting, finally – perhaps the two men even enjoyed a glass of Givry together. It must be said that the head of state has so much to make up for since the president of the Senate read in the press that businessman Bernard Arnault had been warned before him of the dissolution… And what about his interview with the young and amiable Julien Denormandie that the tenant of the Elysée thought it would be relevant to send him during the inter-rounds – “institutional emissary”, they specify at the Palace to give a little substance to this choice – to coax him and consider building the future together? The former Macronist minister would have come out of there a little dazed, noting: “It’s hard to catch him…” Beautiful sincerity. A former member of the Republicans, who knows the LR boss of the senators well, wipes away a tear as he imagines the latter exclaiming in front of the affable Denormandie: “Bring me a platter of cold cuts before I eat you!”
Yes, it’s obvious, Emmanuel Macron is never better served than by himself. Faced with this sly interlocutor, he reveals, this time, the plan he has in mind: take his time. Accept Gabriel Attal’s resignation after the Council of Ministers on Friday, July 12, keep a government in charge of dealing with current affairs until the end of the Olympic Games, then appoint a Prime Minister at the end of the summer. Because the president knows that the creation of a coalition, programmatic alliance, platform, call it what you want, will involve the repatriation of right-wing deputies, he reassures Larcher: his desire is not to let the left twist his arm, he intends to find for Matignon a kind of Jean Castex, an unexpected Prime Minister, perhaps from civil society and capable of leading a government proposing texts that can be voted on by part of the hemicycle.
“A year is too short”
Could Gérard Larcher be offended that his name is not mentioned? Less than ever, according to this right-wing minister who recalls his last conversation with the senator, a month before the European elections. When asked about his desire to enter Matignon, he retorted: “A year is too short.” Certainty of the fleeting nature of the mission. Certainty of presidential immobility?
Xavier Bertrand is not the second person in the State, the one who replaces the president in the event of an interrupted mandate, so he does not have these rich people’s problems. When he spoke with Gérard Larcher at the end of April, he explained to him that he was on a different “trajectory” than that of Matignon. Everything has changed. “He even appears on television with a pressed tie,” jokes a minister. Michel Barnier does not have these problems either, who no longer exercises a mandate. So for a few days, he too has been multiplying his exchanges and he is accelerating even more as the left prepares to come up with a name for Matignon. In constant contact with Gérard Larcher, he talks with Bruno Le Maire, François Bayrou, Valérie Pécresse, Jean-François Copé, Renaud Muselier, Aurélien Pradié. It would be logical for the next Prime Minister not to have belonged to yesterday’s presidential majority, according to some close to Emmanuel Macron. Which leaves François Bayrou to his dreams of building bridges – but only to his dreams. Let a hundred illusions vanish.
The Olympic Games are approaching, this great event that France gave to the world and whose advent Emmanuel Macron praised almost every day. There will be no real Prime Minister? A Macronist from the beginning has just reread Victor Hugo while thinking of the president: “He went with his head held high and through all the undergrowth to the end of the absurd thing.”
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