On Monday, Emmanuel Macron decided, firmly. On immigration, “I want an effective and fair law, in a single text that maintains this balance”, he told the readers of the Parisian, and its timetable is fast: before the summer. On Wednesday, there is no longer any question: Elisabeth Borne sends everything back to better days, those which we know by now that they may never arrive. The president wants, but the government does not: political impotence?
The reversal at the top of the State on this subject, which divides even the majority, reinforces an increasingly strong impression with the second five-year term: speaking and acting, words and deeds, it is as if there were Emmanuel Macron two parallel worlds, whose characteristic is by definition never to meet. The accusation may seem unfair at a time when the May 1 demonstrations show how much the Head of State remains entangled in the pension reform, the one he had announced during his campaign and therefore the one he can defend on the theme: “I do what I say”, as he declared to the Free lunch on April 20, also citing its measures on education.
But these are really the exceptions that prove the rule. François Bayrou struck the blow in the JDD emphasizing that this discrepancy even applied to the foundation of Macronism: “The heart of his project and the sensitivity [du président] were to reinvent the relationship between the base and the so-called summit. But here again the mechanisms of control of power from above, the eternal return of the same elements of language, the same technocratic reflexes have hindered his mission.” How can we not point better than between what Macron promised and the reality? of his action, there is now a gap?
The examples are legion. In the Doubs, on April 27, Emmanuel Macron pronounces an ode to order, “the order which awakens the spirits”, “the order which guarantees freedom”. However, these comments come as the country is in the throes of a certain turmoil and that he himself, the head of state, bears responsibility for it. “He is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as part of the chaos,” noted political scientist Jérôme Fourquet on Europe 1 on Sunday. “What people complain about the most is the mess,” says an elected official who has crisscrossed his department in recent weeks. This time, it is the presidential authority that suffers from the gap between words and reality. If the one who embodies the executive speaks in a vacuum, the trouble wins the population.
Emmanuel Macron is a generous-spoken president – making it short requires real effort from him; he likes the formulas, yesterday, after the fire of Notre-Dame, “the art of being French”, today, in his televised speech of April 17, “the pact of life at work”. During the 2022 campaign, his slogan was written on his candidate poster, “Avec vous”. Each time, nice words, intuitions, but it is difficult to land then concretely…
Now appears the temptation, never very far from this great talker, as it must be admitted from his predecessors, to compensate by the avalanche of words for the lack of actions. It is no longer politics as a “dead language”, to use the expression used at the podium of the National Assembly by Manuel Valls Prime Minister to condemn a jargon that has become incomprehensible to the ears of the French, it is politics reduced to a simple exercise of “verbal words”.
There remains a point where the presidential verb is performative, where it suffices to say to do. It is the appointment of the Prime Minister, which comes under Article 8 of the Constitution, which stipulates that the Head of State is accountable to no one – if one dared, it would seem that it is the king’s choice. However, such a decision would only make sense if it allowed the executive to get back to acting by regaining some leeway. On July 14, Emmanuel Macron will speak again. One of two things. As soon as, according to a fashionable name among macronists, the time is more for “cabotage” than for the conquest of a new horizon, it becomes urgent to adapt your vocabulary, even if it means daring to be modest, certainly not the primary characteristic of the president… Or else you have to overturn the table, since the current political situation is a factor of immobility, and regain control after having twirled your tongue seven times in your mouth.