“We only see you!” Is it a hint of jealousy that we hear in François Hollande’s voice when he addresses Bernard Cazeneuve? Dark suit, dark blue tie, the former president almost invisible next to the majestic friend who, on this almost last day of September, glows red in his Austrian jacket. In Bram, around Carole Delga, there are left-wing social-democratic personalities. And there is Bernard Cazeneuve. Even the dashing Raphaël Glucksmann opted for a tasteless dark suit, what a godsend.
Red tie under red jacket: the parka of the same shade worn a few years earlier by Laurent Wauquiez suddenly seems wise. That Gérald Darmanin’s new outfit, stripped of his tie, appears neglected, in vain? To obtain the votes of the people, to present oneself to them in a neat outfit, a guarantee of respect, was that not the Gaullian challenge?
And what about the fearful suits of the Macronists… “It’s sure that it’s a nice change from their costumes for nightclub bouncers, blue jacket short of the buttocks and tie of the same color”, sneers someone close to the president. Although he was considered for Matignon, Bernard Cazeneuve is “an opponent”, let us take it for granted. “Macron knew it would be hard on me,” he repeats to those who question him about the reasons for his non-nomination. Loyalty to the Bavarian hunting “janker” rather than to the start-up nation suit. “Bernard has a singular elegance made of refinement and subliminal messages,” says Hollande. For a long time, it was hats, khaki or brown. Homage from the republican atheist Cazeneuve to the Catholic writer as free as he is committed François Mauriac, even if the second made them clear? Legacy, also, above all, of a Mitterrandism which considers “neither right, nor left” as an improbable elsewhere.
The left and socialism are him!
The fedora put away, therefore, red tie under red jacket: the left and socialism are him, the man who broke with the PS, ridiculed Mélenchon, refused the New Popular Front… He who, barely a month earlier , in front of Emmanuel Macron who receives him at the Elysée, admits to wanting to modify the pension reform. Not repeal it, as some will then peddle “to harm it”, he thinks. But make it fairer. If the socialists had made the effort to support it, the time for a social policy could have come. Instead… He even heard his comrade Hollande assure him: “If I had supported you, I would have harmed you.” Bewildered sigh of the neglected: “As those who do not support me harm me and those who support me do not do so so as not to harm me, I feel a little alone, sometimes…”
But head held high on red tie and red jacket, always, as if it were also necessary to remind Marine Tondelier and his green blazer that he, former Minister of the Interior, will never bow down to the affront of designating him responsible for the death of environmental activist Rémi Fraisse. When the name of Cazeneuve resonated more and more loudly for Matignon during the summer, the boss of the environmentalists rose up, indignant, exclaiming: “Catastrophic management of the Sivens file”, and the ex-tenant of Beauvau, new, felt so unsupported. Why is no one correcting it? Not one of his political friends, not a journalist to help him. Many times he explained it. Didn’t the case, “a tragedy and a failure”, end with a dismissal of the charges for the gendarme who fired the grenade?
Red tie under red jacket, all topped with a mandarin collar and embellished with a bright white pocket square: respond to excesses with elegance. We call this “the Barnier fashion”, since the Prime Minister replied to Mathilde Panot: “The more aggressive you are, the more respectful I will be.” In politics as everywhere, content and form are one, a high verb is accompanied by an impeccable uniform. That of Cazeneuve: “The reminder of the fraction of Republicans who took it for elegance; Robespierre who had his wig powdered, observes his accomplice the writer and academician François Sureau most seriously. A way of saying to LFI: You don’t understand anything.” Faced with the keffiyeh, also provoke a little by wearing a garment worn by the right in Austria. Even if it means seeing yourself caricatured…
And, slipped into his flat pocket on the heart side, a conviction, which the former Prime Minister displays in private: “With the majority vote, you keep the reasonable under the rule of the extremists, the voting method must detach the left from LFI, proportional voting would cut the cord.” His next fight? All that remains is to find the outfit.
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