The swashbucklers of François Hollande’s five-year term no longer remember very well the date of this dinner. They barely remember that it was a Tuesday at the end of November 2016. A painful page of the five-year term. The one that opened onto the end. The renunciation. A few faithful, some are more so than others, and will be less so when they leave the room that evening. Around the table, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, first secretary of the Socialist Party, Prime Minister Manuel Valls, lifelong friend and Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll, Bruno Leroux, president of the Socialist group in the Assembly, and Didier Guillaume, that of the senators. There is one absentee, angry to the point of not responding to the invitation of the President of the Republic: Claude Bartolone, the president of the National Assembly.
Autumn rain on the Elysée. The palace lights are on full blast, because night falls so early. In the dining room, silence around François Hollande. The menus have been placed on the table. There is often an agenda, we chat about reforms, big and small, about national politics and the petty politics of shopkeepers, that of the parties. This time, nothing. It is the first dinner since the publication of the book by journalists Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, A president should not say that. The book published in October had the effect of a blast on the French political scene. The object of the crime, the reason why Bartolone did not come. There is talk of “political suicide” but not yet of renunciation. If the tie is usually taken off during these relaxed Tuesday feasts, and the jokes flow freely, on this day, the atmosphere is most austere. “Did you know that was going to come out?” the guests ask one after the other, and the host repeats that no. “He wasn’t lying, but he must have thought that it would come out after the presidential election,” recalls one of the guests, still marked by the president’s embarrassment.
How can we make up for this? If the senators observe the affair from a distance, there is an uproar within the socialist majority in the National Assembly. The rebels had already been mistreating him for a few years… Very quickly, before the main course, the conversation about what comes next comes up. The deputies are already murmuring that Hollande could not run again. There are also these primaries wanted by the PS, and made official since last June by an internal vote. Some, including Stéphane Le Foll and Bruno Le Roux, are pushing him to declare his candidacy as soon as possible to “change sequence”, to make people forget the affair. Launching the presidential election means moving on to something else.
“Everything is always possible in politics”
There is this Emmanuel Macron who seems to be making a breakthrough in the polls, and Manuel Valls is stamping his feet with impatience – an open secret. Bruno Le Roux, who will support Macron next, assures that the latter will have a legitimacy problem: “He can’t go if the president is a candidate. He will be marginalized and his campaign will be crushed before it starts.” The Brutus must be eliminated in the bud. “Everything is always possible in politics”, reassures Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, guarantor of the party’s statutes, who nevertheless warns: “but if we don’t do it, we have a Montebourg candidacy outside the party…” At the time, no one had yet seen Benoît Hamon. The anti-Hollande was called Arnaud Montebourg. The name of Christiane Taubira also comes back in force. François Hollande retorts that he can “still” go. An angel comes before cheese. “If you don’t go, François, the other one will go and he will lose,” he said, pointing the finger at Manuel Valls, silent in the middle of this clan of Dutchmen.
At the end of the table, the socialist president listens, sometimes dodges the issue and fills the paper on which the menu had been detailed with notes and arguments. We will leave with many questions, disappointment too… Vertigo of the aftermath. Will he decide to give up on the plane that is taking him to Madagascar and the Francophonie summit on November 25? He is facing himself, several thousand meters above sea level. Fidel Castro has just kicked the bucket, and Claude Bartolone, before takeoff, called on Manuel Valls and François Hollande to participate in the PS primary. A Prime Minister who would confront his president, something never seen before. There is no longer any doubt that in the PS, they are doing everything to prevent him from running for a second term. What is the point of staying? He will come back one day. It will be in 2024, he does not know yet.