It’s crazy how the dissolution really clarified everything! This second five-year term is definitely like no other. The Attal government hadn’t lasted long, and now Michel Barnier is overthrown by a motion of censure three months after his appointment. François Bayrou finds himself in Matignon, but the crisis never ends, political life enters into something new.
A disappointed minister
It is one of the tenors of the Bayrou government who notes this, a little frightened: “We are in such a situation of instability that the National Assembly has not voted for the slightest major reform since December 2023.” And the same added: “It’s difficult to talk about long-term vision when you don’t know if you’ll make it through the week…”
The Court of Auditors, a Macronist oasis
François Bayrou marked out the terrain. The Prime Minister entrusted the Court of Auditors with a “flash mission” to draw up a diagnosis of the state of the pension system in parallel with the negotiations between the social partners. A former Macronist minister is salivating at the prospect of the report. “This will highlight the fact that the Borne reform was not tough enough,” he slips, already imagining debates on a further postponement of the legal age or the introduction of a share of capitalization in the system. Or the opposite of the wish of the left.
François Bayrou disavows Eric Lombard
The Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard did not spontaneously intend to revise downwards the forecast of the growth rate (1.1%), banking on the vote of a budget to restore confidence and revive the economy . But François Bayrou, who hesitated before deciding, did not want to be accused of underestimating the situation and remembered the precedent Bruno Le Maire: he therefore announced in his general policy declaration that the government set its forecast at 0.9%.
As at the RN, Jean-Luc Mélenchon sorts the journalists
Tuesday January 14, the Bourbon Palace is in turmoil for the general policy speech. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came to observe the debates, held a press conference within the walls of the National Assembly. A talk to which his press secretary will voluntarily refuse access to several newspapers, including Release, The WorldL’Express and The Obs. We thought the maneuver was reserved for the National Rally, which regularly refuses access to its events to certain journalists.
Censorship: the little sentence that the rebels had to remove
In a first version of the text of the motion of censure, the LFI deputies stipulated in black and white that all those who did not vote for censure would be de facto considered as “supporters of the Bayrou government”. Words aimed at the socialists, whom Jean-Luc Mélenchon dreams of kicking out of the NFP, who were negotiating a “non-censorship pact” and some small substantive victories on the budget. Under pressure from communist and environmentalist deputies, the Insoumis had to withdraw the sentence.
Bruno Retailleau “the anti-Macron”
For weeks, the President of the Republic and the Minister of the Interior have been competing with each other in caresses. Emmanuel Macron has his teams repeat that he appreciates Bruno Retailleau, whose “loyalty, culture and capacity for work” he praises, while the latter continues to rave about the former’s “mastery of files”. And now, here is an Elysian advisor adding: “Retaileau is the anti-Macron, even physically. He is older, thinner, more ascetic.” Would that be a (strange) compliment? Perhaps, many presidents before Emmanuel Macron have theorized that their successor would be their opposite.
Jean-Marie Le Pen: hide this heritage that I cannot see
At the National Rally, we are wondering how to deal with the disappearance of Jean-Marie Le Pen. A public ceremony took place on Thursday at the Notre-Dame du Val-de-Grâce Church, but some would like the party to get involved. One of the options: the organization of a conference in memory of the founder of the National Front, to pay tribute and learn lessons. But the proposal does not gain consensus in the party, uncomfortable with the poisonous legacy of the founder of the National Front, which we claim without ever really taking responsibility for it.
Gabriel Attal not at the level of Coyote Girls
The documentary on Gabriel Attal, produced by the journalist Louis Morin, has caused a part of the political class within which the former Prime Minister does not only have friends. Thus, one of his former ministers says he is amazed by the very Attalian “modesty” which shines through in the report. A friend of Emmanuel Macron, even more teasing, observed the Médiamétrie audiences on the day of broadcast, 491,000 spectators or 2.4% market share. What inspired this analysis: “Gabriel Attal did less well than Coyote Girls [NDLR : une comédie américaine] but better than Amazing Gypsy Weddings.”
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