It’s 11 a.m., Tuesday January 9, and here is already education coming between Emmanuel Macron and Gabriel Attal. The president and his future Prime Minister have just spent two hours together to mark the start of their shared adventure. “I can’t crash them”: the one who is still Minister of Education has a videoconference with the rectors that he does not want to cancel.
Time stands still for an hour. At 12:10 p.m., Emmanuel Macron telephones Gabriel Attal. Here we go, his appointment at Matignon will be revealed. The duo is in place, except that there is an elephant in the room: a few minutes before the palace’s announcement, RTL gives it away. A leak that the Elysée quickly attributes to a man, a certain François Bayrou, offended at having only been exposed in the very last straight.
This time, it is a most official declaration: Wednesday evening, the mayor of Pau informed AFP, less than two days after indicating that he “would not shy away” if he was offered a ministerial portfolio, that he will not enter the government, “for lack of deep agreement on the policy to follow”. And to cite two areas which would have interested him: “the gulf between the province and Paris and the now increasingly greater distance between citizens and public action”; National Education, above all.
The Prime Minister has never looked favorably on the Bayrou hypothesis
To be and to have been. For Gabriel Attal, this is a crucial point in the construction of his image – all the more crucial as it happens at an accelerated pace. And therefore one of the major criticisms addressed to the one who succeeded her, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra. “That’s really something that annoys him,” says a minister. “He had reconnected with the early Blanquer period, he doesn’t want this image to be flouted.” Apparently, someone close to Emmanuel Macron remarks: “Gabriel left a very strong imprint. There is always the temptation among political leaders that behind you, things don’t shine as much.” The Prime Minister has never looked favorably on the Bayrou hypothesis. At Matignon, we even imagined putting him in Defense, by sending Sébastien Lecornu – who asked nothing of anyone – to National Education.
Doing and undoing. For Emmanuel Macron, education is now his domain, as much as his curse. He believes, when appointing Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, that the rails are drawn, and that it is now necessary to “deliver”. His past is a liability: replacing Jean-Michel Blanquer with Pap Ndiaye was nonsense, as the message sent was contradictory. Choosing Pap Ndiaye was a “gamble”, according to the crazy word used by Emmanuel Macron himself. Removing Gabriel Attal who had just arrived was a slight. Maintaining Amélie Oudéa-Castéra would be a sin of pride. But he hesitates to entrust François Bayrou with this portfolio. The Béarnais “is a political boss, explains a close friend of the head of state. He would be less likely to let others put their paws in his domain. For the president, the ability to do so determines the choice to appoint a minister. Does Would Bayrou be able and would like to implement education reforms? To ask the question, is to answer it.
Leave and come back. François Bayrou is a veteran of National Education. It is almost 11 p.m. on Sunday January 16, 1994. In the afternoon, a million people marched in Paris to protest against the revision of the Falloux law (on the financing of private education by local authorities) . The ministry is almost deserted, the switchboard rings. And who picks up? François Bayrou, this young minister who already dreams of being president and feels that day the wind is passing. Now he no longer picks up, he hangs on: he will always remember that he almost tripped just as he began his march to power. This will not encourage him to multiply the races, he the follower of Churchillian no-sport, as long as he is on rue de Bellechasse, between 1993 and 1997. He will succeed in burying one of the flagship promises of the candidate Chirac, a referendum on the school, because he didn’t like the idea.
Bayrou was the one who most opposed his program on Education
Emmanuel Macron knows it. And he has not forgotten that François Bayrou was the one who most opposed his program on Education. The Express As told, at the beginning of 2022, a meeting to prepare the program goes wrong, is on the verge of degenerating. The Secretary General of the Elysée Alexis Kohler presents the proposals, indexing the remuneration of teachers on the achievement of good results by their students, and taking advantage of this new criterion to establish a rating system for establishments like rankings of the best schools, colleges and high schools, put an end to the single middle school too. A voice then rang out: “I don’t think we can advance the teaching world through threats. It’s a world that needs to be known. It’s suspicious, it has the impression of never being respected, that “We always want to give it liberal criteria. Criteria of McKinsey managers, whereas class is a human relationship! “
More than once François Bayrou was startled by certain temptations, or reflexes, of Macronie. He never forgot Emmanuel Macron’s remarks on the costume, in 2016 [“Le meilleur moyen de se payer un costard, c’est de travailler”]. “The most right-wing phrase imaginable,” he remarked at another time. Even today, certain lurches from the presidential camp left the Palois speechless. There is one criticism that we cannot make of François Bayrou, and that is that he does not have his own vision of National Education. He would not be there to “deliver”.
There is one criticism that can be made of François Bayrou: during times of reshuffle, he makes bargaining an Olympic discipline. He always did. It is not at the age of 72, after having been acquitted by the courts, that he will begin a career as a minor player.
Age, let’s talk about it. In 2017, in the name of the renewal that macronism would embody, Richard Ferrand – perhaps he has forgotten it – placed this same Bayrou “in the cart of those whom the French no longer want”. The two men have since had the opportunity to get closer; in recent hours they have been conversing, worried about certain right-wing drifts. Power turns its youth into a weapon. At the National Assembly during his general policy declaration as well as in Berlin for his first visit abroad, Gabriel Attal reminded his audience that he was born in 1989. “Today, even Darmanin looks old”, notes an advisor. François Bayrou is from another time. That of elephants.
.