“They self-neutralized.” The cold observation of Michel Rocard (in his book of interviews with Georges-Marc Bénamou, If the left knew) on the ticket made up of Gaston Defferre and Pierre Mendès France and their 5.01% in the 1969 presidential election would make any candidate want to repeat the experience. So contrary to the spirit of the Fifth Republic… France is not the United States, the Prime Minister is not a vice-president! So, the Marine Le Pen-Jordan Bardella tandem, already announced by the National Rally candidate, is it a laughable love affair or a union promising change?
There is one, at least, who did not escape the singularity of this ticket. As a good “poloche” fan, Edouard Philippe observes. Don’t we say that in politics, success often depends on mastery of time? Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, it’s first of all a moment. Appointing your Prime Minister more than three years before the presidential election is unprecedented.
“Until now we kept this news for later and to broaden our camp, to bring together; it shows the quiet strength of the RN which can announce it without it causing the slightest stir internally,” observes Christophe Béchu, minister of the Ecological Transition and Secretary General of Horizons. Immediately tempered by MEP and friend from Le Havre Gilles Boyer: “Marine Le Pen’s situation is different from ours because she has often been accused of not having a team, of not knowing who to govern with… So if anyone needs to present a ticket, it’s her.”
A woman-a man, Le Pen-Bardella is also a complementarity. And two generations gathered; the first, 55 years old, shares with the activists her joy at being a new grandmother, while the second, 28 years old, philosopher, in a TikTok video, on the benefits of sweets for her body (the video was seen near 3.6 million times). Two electorates, therefore. Bold, thinks the former head of government. So, “he’s fidgeting”, according to a playmate. To the point of surprising his interlocutors in recent weeks by declaring that together, perhaps, we are stronger to face 2027 and its traps.
Points in common with Bernard Cazeneuve
The former Edouard Philippe glances to the right. Cuddles Valérie Pécresse and smiles at Gérard Larcher. Edouard Philippe glances to the left. Would he prefer roses? As soon as he arrived in Matignon, he took care to photograph the beautiful rose garden wanted by Mitterrand in Souzy-la-Briche, an Essonne vacation spot for Matignon’s tired guest, and to send the photo by SMS to his restaurateur. Congratulations on the colors of the flowers, this pale pink… and this pure white. The proud recipient? Bernard Cazeneuve, a socialist with whom he has so much in common. A sense of seriousness and a sense of humor, but also visions of society and values that are not so distant. The right, or what will remain of it after the European elections, will be partly won over to the Philippian cause, it is believed in the entourage of the founder of Horizons. Its room for progress lies on the left, among this reasonable left, in search of freedom as much as authority, which has not denied the value of work and which Cazeneuve intends to embody. One day at the end of 2023, hearing the latter praise the merits of Edouard Philippe, L’Express asked the former mayor of Cherbourg the question of his support. “And why wouldn’t it be Edouard who would line up behind me?”, he replied, only slightly angry.
At the end of 2023, the two men share the spotlight, not electorally but in the media. Here they are on the front page of the Tribune Sunday, together, for a text written by four hands, a call for calm and unity “in these dark times”. “One day in May 2017, in the courtyard of Matignon, side by side, we said that we were a man of the right for one and a man of the left for the other,” they wrote. “This divide was a benchmark in the alternation and it remains so.”
Can this divide justify that they are now coming together? After all, Edouard Philippe claims to want to unite “from the conservative right to the Mitterrandian left”. He might as well try the adventure with a representative of the left that he likes. The idea, one of his visitors understood, is not foreign to him. Worse, “he likes her,” confirms another. Immediately, Gilles Boyer moderates: “When we form a ticket, we are disappointed by fifteen people, we must also think about that. The choice of a Prime Minister is not the beginnings of a campaign, it is the result of ‘an election. Each election has its own truth…’ In the meantime, no election will erase the facts: the two men, before building a common future, above all have an identical past. Both have taken on the responsibilities of Prime Minister: baroque to imagine that one could agree to assist the other, baroque to imagine that one could agree to return to positions already occupied. And when we know, words of Edouard Philippe, that “It doesn’t all go back to Matignon, no, just the hassles”…
A Holland – Glucksmann tandem
But in politics as in architecture, freedom of form has its supporters. Thus François Hollande no longer refrains from thinking, in his turn, that “a solitary candidacy, as was the case until now, is no longer appropriate today”, explains- we in his surroundings. The former President of the Republic, who wrote and trumpeted that the function of Prime Minister should be abolished so that “the President of the Republic is the sole head of the executive”, is also looking with interest at the possibility of ‘a duo. He is even already toying with the idea of proposing a tandem to… Raphaël Glucksmann, part of an anti-Melenchonist left, capable of seducing an electorate which has turned its back on him. This is undoubtedly ignoring the ambitions of the head of the European list a little quickly in the event of an honorable score on June 9.
Whatever the team, if there is a ticket, what becomes of the freedom of the Head of State to change the tenant of Matignon according to the crises and his five-year term? Modify one of the two heads for which the French would have voted? Broken promises, broken contract! the latter would no doubt shout. Suddenly, illegitimacy lurks.
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