“So, you have three years left to be a minister!” It’s crazy how quickly humor goes out of date. When Sébastien Lecornu teases Alexis Kohler, whom he has just joined for dinner in a Parisian restaurant on May 15, who can imagine that the Secretary General of the Elysée has not three years left to become a minister, but three weeks to finish exercising his responsibilities as he has envisioned them since 2017? Probably no one, not even the person concerned who replies diligently to his table neighbor: “Minister? Firstly, that requires qualities that I don’t have, I’m not a good communicator. Secondly, it’s the apotheosis of conflicts of interest, after that I wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
The “vice-president”, as his detractors and promoters have nicknamed him, may have participated in discussions on the hypothesis of dissolution, but on this spring evening, the decision and its consequences seem so far away… Here he is, discussing his future; how narrow the field of possibilities seems when one has occupied the general secretariat of the presidency of the Republic for seven years. The High Authority for Transparency in Public Life is watching, and above all preventing. “The only thing I can do is go work abroad or do consulting,” Kohler notes. Seven years serving France night and day and then putting this experience to good use outside our borders? Heartbreaking. “Alexis is touching,” a guest will say the next day. “He is attached to his country.”
It only takes a second to swallow up a world, the time to pronounce “dissolution”. Swept away confidences and certainties, dreams of a distant future… Since the storm blown by Emmanuel Macron, Alexis Kohler no longer has time to think about what comes next. Tomorrow began yesterday, June 9 to be precise, and is nothing like what he had imagined. He, the chief curator of Macronism, the lookout, he whose function, his mission above all, as he conceives it, consists of ensuring the respect and fair execution of the presidential program, has suddenly lost his reason for being at the same time as the head of state his majority in the Assembly. His role is no longer his role. “It changes the conditions of its exercise which was an exercise of full power, in the primary and non-pejorative sense of the term”, we observe in his entourage.
“We may have made a big mistake”
With the unprecedented cohabitation that is coming, whatever its form, the ideological and theoretical understanding will also disappear, as will the indispensable and close collaboration between the Secretary General of the Elysée and the Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister. From Benoît Ribadeau-Dumas, Chief of Staff of Edouard Philippe, to Emmanuel Moulin, Chief of Staff of Gabriel Attal, Alexis Kohler will have lived with them – and despite Emmanuel Macron’s tortuous relations with his Prime Ministers – months or years of intellectual complicity. Friday, June 28, two days before the first round of the legislative elections, through the thin walls of the old Hôtel de Matignon, timid laughter but laughter nonetheless. Alexis Kohler has just joined Emmanuel Moulin and Fanny Anor, Deputy Chief of Staff of Gabriel Attal, for lunch. Thinking together, grieving together for a few more moments.
“We may have made a big mistake.” It took the ordeal of the early legislative elections for Alexis Kohler to move away from Macron’s orthodoxy. Even before the second round, while the president chanted and stressed the relevance of his choice, some heard the “second president” confess his hesitations. How could he remain calm? This dissolution, many deputies, several ministerial collaborators will pay the price, starting with his lifelong companion, Emmanuel Moulin. Persuaded by Kohler, the latter left his post as Treasury Director at Bercy in January to come to the aid of Gabriel Attal, Prime Minister. The mission promised to be short-lived; no one told him that it would be expeditious. “Alexis feels a deep sadness at the idea of seeing these careers cut short,” testifies his friend Philippe Grangeon.
Low blow
At the Elysée, at Matignon where people are still furious, those who perceive his embarrassment are looking for the answer to their question: who convinced the Jansenist Kohler of the merits of this crazy dissolution? Grangeon insists: “He is not a man of blows, he is not a radical, he is a moderate rarely a follower of “come on, let’s turn the table”.” So, who? Among those with whom Emmanuel Macron shared his thoughts on the subject, according to The worldhis memory advisor Bruno Roger-Petit. Between the ex-journalist and the leader’s right-hand man, a stimulating relationship: all blows are allowed. Illustration: a few weeks after the appointment to the Ministry of Culture of Rachida Dati – author of several not exactly syrupy SMS sent to Kohler whom she accuses of having prevented the president from supporting her during the last municipal elections -, “BRP” swears by all gods that the emissary sent by the head of state to the mayor of the 7th arrondissement to convince her to join the government… received from Kohler, in person, this counter-order: “We must discourage her.”
Another protagonist presented as one of the artificers of the dissolution, the sly ex-Sarkozy supporter Pierre Charon hardly maintains more friendly relations with the ENA graduate Kohler. Does the former know that the latter considered his nomination – at one time considered after his defeat in the senatorial elections – as political advisor to the Palace unreasonable? Although they do not speak the same language, they understand that they do not understand each other.
“I had dinner with Darmanin”
An index finger then another is extended in the direction of… Gérald Darmanin. As scoundrel as Alexis Kohler seems straightforward. Between the cunning politician and the rigorous senior civil servant, what common points? None or almost none, which is the assurance of a beautiful friendship. The comrades of the Secretary General of the Elysée regularly hear the latter state: “I had dinner with Darmanin.” Stupor. “Alexis and Gérald, it’s like Guéant and Djouhri [NDLR : secrétaire général de l’Elysée époque Nicolas Sarkozy, l’austère Claude Guéant se prend d’affection pour le sulfureux homme d’affaires Alexandre Djouhri, homme de l’ombre des financements libyens de la campagne de 2007]dares an advisor from Matignon. Kohler is fascinated by Darmanin the thug, the brigand.” A close friend of Emmanuel Macron adds: “We all have a little midinette side, we meet people who are so different from us that they attract us.” It must be said that the Minister of the Interior has no equal when it comes to cajoling those who should hate him. The flowers sent on the day he left Matignon to Elisabeth Borne, with whom he had fought so much, faded much faster than the story of this sweet attention. And the former Prime Minister, who can nevertheless be caustic, barely laughed when one of her supporters warned her: “Above all, don’t put them in a vase, if you soak them in water they will give off vapors, it will end badly…” Some are wary of him, others adore him, Kohler belongs to the second category. From there to losing all critical sense in front of him…
In the end, who cares who is guilty. Since Sunday, July 7, it is no longer the time for friends, it is the time for regrets. “Alexis is a man who is always, always, guided by the result, so when we dissolve, in his mind, it is to win a majority”, the uncompromising reasoning of a former Elysée strategist. Should we conclude that the defeat will hasten the departure of the eternal? It would almost be the opposite, according to those who have had long conversations with him about his life far from the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Because “the spirit of responsibility” is gripping him, he knows that a “time of overlapping” will be necessary so that the new, necessarily complex government can settle in under acceptable conditions. For him, hell is not other people, hell is France. This State for which he has sacrificed so much still holds him back, at a time when he seemed resigned to thinking about himself, to getting away from this stifling palace and breaking with a routine, thus summed up by one of his colleagues: “He arrives at 8 o’clock, he has lunch in his office, he has dinner in his office, he spends his life between his office, the green room and the golden room, his life is 250 square meters every day that God made, power is a high price to pay.”
“Alexis is essential to my husband”
In front of his closest friends, in the weeks preceding the European elections, oh hope, he had mentioned the names of successors. “Not different enough from you”, “too different from you”, opinions varied but all his interlocutors felt that, for the first time in seven years, he was ready to turn the page on the Elysée, perhaps as early as the fall of 2024. Or before, why not. An important clarification from a fellow climber: “We are at the end of our lease, he will be the one who decides when. With only one tropism: duty.” Here he is “exhausted”, “emptied”, according to the words of his cronies, also undoubtedly affected by the clan struggles around the president and the ambiguity of the latter still refusing to decide. While in the Madame wing, they were plotting against the too powerful secretary general, Brigitte Macron, blandly repeated: “Alexis is essential to my husband.”
Finally, there are the differences that, like in a couple, increase over time. Does Alexis Kohler remember that day in March 2024 when, leaning over the speech that Emmanuel Macron was to give before the CRIF, he suggested that the following sentence be reformulated: “Where anti-Semitism flourishes, all other forms of hatred flourish”? The statement, suggested by Bruno Roger-Petit, seemed perilous to him. The president did not change it. A lighter disagreement: the art of not keeping quiet – saturating TV, radio, newspapers – mastered to perfection by the head of state, to the great displeasure of his first collaborator who often dreams of silence. Love lasts seven years.
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