September, gray day in Saint-Sever. A ballet of umbrellas enlivens the small square in Verdun, the geographical center of the Landes town of 5,000 souls. A few stop in front of a door of a house with red shutters. The elders of the village remember that the walls once housed a good restaurant. Boris Vallaud and his family had lunch there after his grandfather’s funeral. The owner ended up going out of business, leaving some abandoned furniture there, so Vallaud made it his permanent home in 2017 when he was elected deputy for the area – the 3rd constituency of Landes. On the front, no huge photo with his smiling face in close-up labeled “Your deputy Boris Vallaud”, but his name on an anonymously pale sign at the corner of the doorbell which announces visitors. They always come on Thursday and Friday, always numerous, always full of drama. These people know each other, must have crossed paths at one of the 800 annual Landes festivals. Repeat offenders of problems, precarious workers banned from banking, unemployed by the shovel, farmers, colossi of this rugby country, who present themselves as “small farmers” with downcast eyes and throats tied with tears as they are drowned in debt , women beaten and beaten by their husbands… Boris Vallaud saw some pass around the small round table. He listens to the long procession of problems, the not so serious ones and the terrible ones, the neighborhood and road affairs where we drive too fast like suicides or child rape. He writes them down in his large spiral notebook. One paragraph per hearing.
That Thursday, a cleaning lady pushed the door. An immigrant from an Asian country, Narisara* has lived in France for twenty-seven years, formerly married to a Frenchman. He had married her, had brought her to the Landes. He had hit her too. During the separation, he left with the money but especially the administrative papers. The woman, mother of three children born in France, only has her old residence permit which she would like to renew but the embassy of her country of origin refuses to give her a copy of her birth certificate. She would have to come to Paris to study the request, without any assurance of obtaining the document, but she does not have enough money for a round trip between Dax and Paris, and then who will look after the children? She works a lot, cleaning every day, even on Sundays. His little blue binder is full of pay slips. “It’s my life,” she proclaims, smiling proudly. If she came to see Boris Vallaud, it was for help with the paperwork but also a little extra time in Paris. He is an MP after all, he must know some nice people there. We see it on television. A letter with the letterhead of the National Assembly or a simple email with his name to alert the embassy about Narisara’s situation, as he did so many others to the prefect, to justice, to the CAF. That could resolve a situation.
The actor’s paradox
Because this is what many come looking for, helpless most of the time: interpersonal skills, an influential ear with the public authorities, to zigzag a little more easily through the icy maze of the French administration. Here, in Saint-Sever, as in so many other corners of France, the State has given up over the years. There is no high school or court. The last kilometer of the State is between the four walls of this Boris Vallaud office. For Narisara, the chosen one will send a letter to the ambassador in Paris. “I write and I tell you,” says the deputy. A start of hope with a few words which say not the helplessness of the host but the limited scope of its powers. He is “only” a deputy. Often, visitors make him the incarnation of the evils from above which sometimes befall the people below. Evils in five letters sometimes: Cerfa. Like this day when one of his colleagues accompanied a young mother panicking in front of the twenty pages of a disability aid application file for her son. “In spite of myself, I am the face of disappointment,” admits Vallaud. “The powerless bearer of silence when questions are asked.”
All these crossed Landes lives, these lives far from Paris, Boris Vallaud decided to tell them in Permanently. These lives that I make mine (Odile Jacob). A book that questions the role of “politics” in 2024, whether mayor, departmental or regional councilor, minister or, there, deputy; on their usefulness in the lives of “people who are nothing”. They are said to be too busy in the capital, with party affairs and others. A book as an ideological reflection in the service of the left so that it is no longer the court of people’s lives. “Politics fascinates me as much as it disgusts me, and I never cease to be caught between the romanticism of action and the disenchantment of impotence, admits Boris Vallaud in his pages. Often, romanticism is in Saint- Sever when disenchantment is in Paris.” He applies Diderot’s actor’s paradox to his mandate: to play with reason to better feign emotion. The best actor is not the one who plays with the most feeling but the one who uses the most method and composure. Vallaud ponders with himself: “Is the best MP the one who espouses with unfiltered empathy the causes of the men and women of his constituency or the one who defends without passion a certain idea of the general interest, of nation, of the Republic, sometimes against the dominant opinion, sometimes against it Should we write and vote the law in cold blood or immerse ourselves in the lives of others to be the most fair interpreter of the mandate they have? gave me?” But Boris Vallaud is not Jacques Chirac or many others, including on the left who swear they know “the people” and speak in their name from the capital. His empathy is not feigned.
These lives, the good student with the blonde bowl cut born in Beirut, son of the famous historian Pierre Vallaud (who was the publisher of a certain Michel Barnier) could well have ignored them, and even never crossed their path. Vallaud, the discreet hard worker of the famous Léopold Sédar Senghor promotion at the ENA which saw Emmanuel Macron, Sibyle Veil, Mathias Vicherat and Gaspard Gantzer pass through. When he left the classes on rue Sainte-Marguerite in Strasbourg in 2004, careers in the Treasury, foreign affairs and the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs beckoned to him, but to all this he preferred the prefectural office. He began his career as secretary general of the Landes prefecture. “Secretary general of the prefecture? Like Maurice Papon?”, Raymond Aubrac will one day tease him. Henri Emmanuelli, the socialist baron of Landes and deputy for the constituency before him, falls under his spell and calls him to untangle all kinds of affairs with the State. “I’d rather bother you than the prefect. You always find a solution,” the Landais with the big eyebrows will flatter him one day, pushing him to take his PS card. He knows that Vallaud has a heart on the left: his wife is called Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, then a young socialist figure, spokesperson for the campaign in 2007, and soon Minister of National Education. The young enarque will prefer to go to Saône-et-Loire with Arnaud Montebourg – his “best years”. The latter will take him into his office at the Ministry of Productive Recovery. It will then be the Elysée, at the general secretariat, replacing Emmanuel Macron and Nicolas Revel in 2014. Revel will entrust him with a little piece of music that has been running through his head ever since: “I’m leaving because I’m question my usefulness.”
“He is not overcome by the desire to conquer power”
Utility, the beginning of a political obsession. But what more can he do now? Minister ? Lucie Castets suggested it to him, the idea hardly enchanted him. Michel Barnier dreamed of him saying yes, “no thank you.” Prime Minister? “Meh.” President of the Republic, it will be. He refuses to admit it publicly, but he plans to join the dance of contenders to succeed Emmanuel Macron. One more. How many have such high self-esteem, swearing to sacrifice, to the republican priesthood, to the point of believing that they can get millions of French people behind their name? Boris Vallaud is not one of those who imagines a destiny as a savior candidate, all his friends say it with a hint of annoyance in their voice as they would like him to be more offensive. “Unlike many others, he is not overcome by the desire to conquer power even though he has all the qualities to carry it,” says his historian friend Christophe Prochasson. “He is authentically modest and often says to himself that the life is also elsewhere. He doesn’t have a crazy desire to become President of the Republic, which I regret.” And to correct himself immediately: “Although! It’s not in the political zeitgeist, but it’s actually a quality.”
You still have to find the way. We still have to put aside the other Narcissus that the Socialist Party is full of. The big and low maneuvers, the blows, the steps necessary to conquer the power which makes it possible to change the lives of people that he recounts in his work. Boris Vallaud knows how to do it: presiding over the group of socialist deputies with its individualities, from François Hollande to the ambitious young guns, is no easy task. If the party led by Olivier Faure is a basket of crabs, the parliamentary group led by Vallaud is a haven of consensus as peaceful as it is effective. “In the party we argue and in the group we work”, summarizes a parliamentarian close to Vallaud, one of the many who push him to “go further”.
Going further already means replacing the First Secretary. Before the dissolution, he was already preparing to “press the button”, according to a socialist. Mild understatement. “With a few, we thought about a badaboum political return but the dissolution disrupted our plans,” confides one of his friends who assures that the idea has not been abandoned: he wants to overturn the socialist table, with class. Socialist deputies, mayors and elected officials, such as Johanna Rolland or Stéphane Troussel, who were close to Faure, like many of his internal adversaries, say they are ready to put themselves in battle order to roll out the red carpet for him at the next PS congress. , early 2025. A congress that Vallaud hopes will be “reconciliation”, with new left-wing doctrinaire work that he has been simmering for several years. The Landais doesn’t say a word about it, but he knows that it will soon take a blow, a shock, otherwise the lives crossed while crisscrossing the Landes will continue to ring at the door of his office on Thursdays and Fridays until the Rally national settles there.
*The first name has been changed
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