He never went to bed early. It is not because the clocks in Riyadh indicate 2 a.m. that the time has come for Emmanuel Macron to close his eyes. Hello ? On the phone, it is midnight, Paris is asleep, and the president’s interlocutor is asked not to do the same. Tormented even in Saudi Arabia by the parliamentary tumult, the head of state needs to stretch his ideas, what tomorrow, the day after tomorrow will look like and this entire mandate hit by a dissolution whose rebounds take on air day after day of apocalypse? Panic, how much time will he have left to straighten out his five-year term if he has to change Prime Minister again? “Donald Trump is elected for 48 months, intones the sleepy strategist on the other end of the phone. He will have the midterms at midterm which, given the electoral reality, can only be a loss of power for him, he has so 24 months ahead of him you have 30, that’s a very long time.” How comforting it is to drown in your reflection.
The night drags on, and so does the conversation; Emmanuel Macron seems in a hurry not to procrastinate. Seething: “I will go very, very quickly, it’s unthinkable to do otherwise.” Peremptory: “This time, I will not concert.” Name in a hurry, just to show them, all these party leaders, who Raoul is. A censorship and the next day the sovereign presidential choice of a new Prime Minister. Who will be asked to receive, listen, reach out… “The anti-Barnier, what,” mocks the one who is still waiting for permission to go to bed. “Marine Le Pen, we must put her in the situation where censoring again would have too high a transactional cost,” continues the president. Is that strange noise he hears a muffled yawn? “You have to stay away,” the almost dozing man hastily replies. No doubt the tenant of the Elysée acquiesced… And two days later, barely twenty minutes after the vote on the motion of censure, announced that he would appear on all the channels during the television news. . “The main thing for him is to be in the center, he’s still there… one of his friends sidesteps him. Beyond appearances, I suppose he’s satisfied.”
What the head of state didn’t like
And no doubt part of the president is not unhappy to see Michel Barnier move away. Certainly, Emmanuel Macron can be grateful to him for having publicly displayed his respect for the person and the function of the President of the Republic. But the young head of state, it is a minister who has remained loyal to him who says it, did not like the breath of fresh air that the Savoyard managed to blow in the first weeks following his appointment – it was enough yet to wait, and really not long, for it to pass. The president did not necessarily appreciate seeing the former European commissioner sit back and speak on the international scene: the interventions of Michel Barnier, almost every time, after the traditional point devoted to foreign affairs by the leader of the State in the Council of Ministers, made those present smile.
Above all, the form cannot hide the substance. There, the shoe quickly hurt, without Emmanuel Macron being able to say a word. The way in which the tax issue arose this fall quickly worried the Elysée. Be careful, “cognitive subject more than material”: the French will have the impression that if large companies were the first to be caught by the tax patrol, we would then get dangerously close to them, based on notary fees or soda taxes. “I don’t believe in consolidation through taxes, because the signal is bad, so revenues will not correspond to expectations, you are running behind the horizon,” warns a loyalist of the head of state. Seeing that it was a Prime Minister who was a member of LR who was doing it again, Emmanuel Macron said to himself that the right definitely had as much of a compass problem as the left. This reflection done, he was hardly further advanced. Which did not prevent him from confiding to a faithful friend: “I am ready for all scenarios.” Loyalty does not prohibit teasing, the confidant replied: “I hope you are as ready as Séjourné who told you that the party was ready at the time of your dissolution.” Even the president laughed.
“Friends” and end of inadmissibility
Is the Elysée the hospital that makes fun of charity? When the president looks at governmental and parliamentary disorder, others look at dissolution. Above all, do not believe that time has erased the wounds, reconciled men. During the summer, Emmanuel Macron sent a standard letter to thank the deputies from his camp who agreed to withdraw between the two rounds, “Amitiés” concludes it. From one of these defeated elected officials, he will receive a copy of his own letter as a final refusal, accompanied by a few well-felt but badly felt formulas to explain that friendship had not, no longer had place of being.
It must be said that there are some of them who have lost, because of him, ministries, seats or cabinet positions, without gaining the slightest value on the job market. Staggering to hear during a job interview a recruiter getting impatient: “But what the hell are you doing with the budget?!” However, this is the new reality for these Macronists who have been convinced for so long that the “pro business” side of the leader would ensure them a bright future in a large group or with a boss. But the dissolution has weakened relations between the Elysée and the economic world and this censorship is not likely to tighten them.
“It only materialized something that already existed”: there remains one place in France where the decision remains staunchly defended, and that is obviously the Presidency of the Republic. However, the building is visibly weakening, and this was expected. Already, between the two rounds of the legislative elections, Bruno Le Maire exchanges with Emmanuel Macron: “How do we keep you going? That’s the only question.” We are there. Jean-Luc Mélenchon repeats it every day, and, as far as he is concerned, since the first day after the legislative elections.
From resignation to Saint Louis
Resign ? And before March 31 if possible, the date of Marine Le Pen’s judgment? “Hazardous”, “lunar” even, say Emmanuel Macron’s friends. Who judge the president of the RN group in the Assembly “uncompatible” to play both, if not at the same time, the card of “institutionalization” and that of dismissal. Obviously, the head of state has no intention of going out of business. But right now it’s not the lyrics that matter, it’s the background music that’s getting louder. Last week, an Elabe poll indicated that 63% of French people were in favor of Emmanuel Macron resigning in the event of government censorship.
What will shake the person concerned, once the censorship has been voted? Frank chuckles from an intimate: “You want to laugh, even after his successor has been elected he will use the pretext of a crisis in Peru to implement article 16 and stay one more month at the center of the world…” Resignation unthinkable: opinion delivered unanimously by those who closely associate with the Head of State. For reasons which according to them have as much to do with the psychology of the character as with his attachment to the Fifth Republic. “If he resigned because there is a parliamentary crisis, it would be the end of the Fifth Republic, it would mean that we consider that the President of the Republic is also responsible to Parliament.” Resignation impossible, in short.
Donald Trump re-elected: “good news for the president, this gives him some fresh air”, rejoiced in mid-November a former advisor who remained loyal. Donald Trump in Paris to see the political instability in which this moderate president and his country are mired: that is embarrassing. But it is not 331 grumpy deputies who will spoil the party and the presidential success. “It is up to us, the French of today, to ensure this great continuity which makes up the French nation,” he warned, moved, in his speech following the fire in the cathedral of Paris in April 2019. Rebuilding Notre-Dame: “We said it, I did it!” the head of state is tempted to exclaim now. From Saint Louis to Macron…
A voiceless president?
Emmanuel Macron would like to take up his pilgrim’s staff again, and not just to inaugurate Notre-Dame on Saturday and Sunday. Since the dissolution, he has welcomed foreign leaders on state visits – “There have never been so many in such a short time”, notes a diplomat. It was the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the King of the Belgians, the President of Nigeria – with, please, the large mixed escort made up of 140 horses and 28 bikers from the Republican Guard motorcycle squadron… In Europe, “the risk of being swept away by history” is there, the head of state has been saying this for some time.
Tuesday, at a conference of presidents at the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet indicated that Emmanuel Macron wanted the debate on censorship to take place only after his return to France, at the end of his trip to Saudi Arabia. That’s the question. What impact does the voice of a president whose country is on the brink of collapse have?
Michel Sardou had nevertheless warned him. October 15 at the Elysée, one Armagnac, two Armagnacs, the singer, just pinned, apostrophes his host: “You have a voice that falls, President.” Catastrophized look, incomprehension, self-defense: “I have nevertheless worked… My voice is not falling”. And the artist who refuses to capitulate: “Yes, with you it starts from the top, then it must start from the stomach. You have to speak so that the people behind you hear you.” What reach does this president’s voice have?
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