From the art of the opposite. At the dawn of the new school year, Nicolas Sarkozy distributes his end-of-year report. The former head of state publishes on August 22 The time of battles (Fayard), account of the second part of his five-year term. Over 560 pages, the founder of the Republicans retraces the years 2009-2012. Nicolas Sarkozy is not just a storyteller. The ex-president stuffs his work with political digressions and comments on the putative candidates for the next presidential election.
Are you wondering about your future choice? Nicolas Sarkozy is there for you! Neutrality is not appropriate. Analyzes and personal considerations intertwine in the picture drawn by the former head of state of the political class. We cannot sail for forty years in the troubled waters of the Fifth Republic without leaving behind some intimate resentment. But one thing is obvious: Nicolas Sarkozy imagines more of a Macronist successor than from LR. “The leader does the essentials, he writes. But this one will have more chances to emerge if he is within a large and powerful formation rather than locked up in a small one”, he writes. With less than 5% in the last presidential election, LR falls into the second category.
So, go for Macronie. Nicolas Sarkozy praises Gérald Darmanin on about thirty lines. He praises his “energy”, his “understanding of popular aspirations” and his “atypical career”. “Will he be able to take another step, even the final step, the one that leads to the presidency of the Republic? I wish him that.” Only advice in the form of criticism: “His skill should not take precedence over his sincerity.” The two men know each other well. The Minister of the Interior was Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign coordinator during the 2016 primary. Gérald Darmanin barely claims a tropism more social than identity, unlike his predecessor in Beauvau. “They have different backgrounds but a common desire to want to speak to the people”, notes the LR mayor of La Baule Franck Louvrier.
It’s not just that. Nicolas Sarkozy salutes the “loyalty” of a man, who “accompanied him at a time when things were more complicated for [lui] than they had ever been before”. Noble formula which masks a harsh reality: Darmanin “treats”. The two men are dating, the Minister of the Interior probed Nicolas Sarkozy before entering the government in 2017 “Darmanin is a succession of small skills towards Sarkozy, notes a close friend of the former president. He did not commit any fault in his relationship with him, even if he disappeared in 2016 when the polls were falling.” An LR executive confirms: “I see more emotional than political speech there.” At Nicolas Sarkozy, affect and politics are often one. Didn’t he reproach Valérie Pécresse for not having sent her wishes to him until January 2, 2022 by simple message? Emmanuel Macron had called him the day before…
One question remains: is being knighted by Nicolas Sarkozy a strength in such a heterogeneous Macronie? Since Gérald Darmanin began his small steps aside this summer, some early macronists suspect the Minister of the Interior of being more loyal to the former head of state than to the current one… We must to say that by choosing his foal for 2027, Nicolas Sarkozy is already beginning to bury, in 2023, a president elected in 2022… the majority, in particular Bayrou”, slips a Renaissance deputy.
The war against Bayrou
François Bayrou, he will not have these questions to ask. The former head of state took advantage of this new opus to crush the president of the MoDem, whom he never carried in his heart, even when the RPR and the UDF were allies and the two men worked together in the same government of Edouard Balladur. Nicolas Sarkozy had already settled his accounts in the past, he adds a substantial layer of it today: “He has become a master in terms of immobility since, after four years spent rue de Grenelle at the Ministry of National Education, he there had never been a single reform that bore his name, and for good reason… He had never implemented a single one!”, notes the former president, exasperated by François Bayrou’s desire to “not force through”. In this respect, he is particularly surprised – to say the least – to see the mayor of Pau being appointed head of the High Commission for Planning by Emmanuel Macron. He quips: “Who knows? Maybe a flash will eventually open the eyes of this pusillanimous personality and he will finally start to act rather than comment. ‘There is only one way to to fail, said Clemenceau so aptly, is to give up before having succeeded.’ Bayrou, he gives up before having started”, he writes with a pen dipped in a bucket of vitriol.
Obviously, as the Ex writes, these two were not made for each other: “Bayrou, that’s all that Nicolas hates, who likes to take risks”, slips a friend by Sarkozy. The boss of the Modem is not surprised by the projections of his best enemy, whom he qualifies in a small committee as “a little guy fascinated by dough and power”, since he considers, as he sometimes tells his friends , that the former tenant of the Elysée continues an eternal war against him. Moreover, François Bayrou did not hesitate to return the favor: in 2009, his book Abuse of power was a pamphlet that could not be more anti-Sarkozyst and, since 2017, the first ally of Emmanuel Macron fears that the influence of the former head of state will extend to Macronie. “It’s crazy! If it’s Sarkozy who makes the government, it must be said!”, He strangled himself the day after the 2020 reshuffle which saw Jean Castex replace Edouard Philippe. If war has been declared for a long time, it is far from over.
Philippe, a lack of leadership
The time of battles conceals a lighter, more subtle, but nevertheless real spade for another suitor – this one fully displayed – at the Elysée in 2027: Edouard Philippe. At the turn of a chapter, Nicolas Sarkozy compares the former Prime Minister to one of his predecessors at Matignon, a certain François Fillon. And when you know how much the two LR tenors have given rise to a visceral hatred between them, the parallel is not flattering: “These are two valuable personalities who present themselves well and who have real talents but they are never better than when they adopt ‘postures’ which can conceal a lack of leadership.” The leader of Horizons will appreciate… Between the former mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine and the current one of Le Havre, the companionship has always been on the upswing, especially since the competition born between Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppé during the creation of the UMP in 2022. Gérald Darmanin did try to play matchmaker during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term by inviting them to the same table, as Nathalie Schuck and Olivier Beaumont narrate in Honey, I narrowed the right, but “they never liked each other”, breathes a lieutenant of Philippe. “Ah, Sarko’s nasties, quite a poem…, creaks another Horizons executive. Edouard has many lessons to receive in terms of ‘postures’, especially when they come from professionals. Sarkozy continues his vindictiveness against those who did not support him, at least on this point, he is very consistent.”
The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, meanwhile, is entitled to his little flattery. Of four lines, certainly, in this ocean of more than five hundred pages, but all the same, it is already taken. Nicolas Sarkozy is pleased to have given him, during his five-year term, a more political role after he managed European Affairs: “At the Ministry of Agriculture, he had the possibility of expressing all the talent that I sensed to him “I was never disappointed by his seriousness and his capacity for work. He has since demonstrated his great political qualities in the service of Emmanuel Macron”, writes the former president.
Praise, there is also for Jean Castex, the anti-Macron, the negative, that some imagine in recourse in four years. This is not surprising: the former Prime Minister and Nicolas Sarkozy have had a friendly relationship since the former was Deputy Secretary General of the Elysée “immediately operational and essential” between 2011 and 2012. In the summer of 2020, Nicolas Sarkozy had weighed in with all his weight for Emmanuel Macron to appoint him to Matignon. “He is a tireless worker, a perfectionist capable of recording everything, he says. He is fine, more than he lets on. His accent, his good nature, his simplicity of appearance conceal an iron ambition. and great self-confidence.” The former President of the Republic also goes there with his little warning at the bottom of the notebook, just to not be too laudatory, in the event that the CEO of the RATP would take it into his head to succeed Emmanuel Macron: “It can happen to him to prefer skill to courage, which could harm him if he ever increases the bet of his ambitions.” A good 16/20.
And the Republicans, in all this? Nicolas Sarkozy is careful not to forget the training he created in 2015. His main suitor Laurent Wauquiez is the subject of a few sweet words: “I have always considered him to be the most brilliant of his generation. not changed his mind. Now it’s up to him to know how to put himself in danger by leaving his comfort zone. He can if he wants to.” The formula sums up the ambivalent feelings of the former head of state towards his former minister. He finds him brilliant, but too timid. “He does not understand why he was not at the top of the list for the 2019 Europeans, why he gave up the 2021 primary or the presidency of LR”, confided in March an interlocutor of Nicolas Sarkozy. Between the two men, the affect is less. “He finds it very good, but God knows he annoyed him,” sighs an intimate of the former mayor of Neuilly. The action of Xavier Bertrand – minister and secretary general of the UMP – is finally welcomed by the former tenant of the Elysée. But he regrets his propensity for “bitterness” in an exercise in comparison. “There is a bit of Xavier Bertrand in today’s Gérald Darmanin, but more flexible because he has more self-confidence and fewer humiliations to avenge.” Gérald Darmanin, Sarkozy’s new compass?