Barely named, and already the little music is playing. What if it was him? If the one who presents himself as the repairer of France, the one who has advocated for three decades the union of moderates, the one who, from the presidential campaign of 2007, warned the other candidates against resorting to magic money – “it is not possible that they continue every evening to sign checks which will be made of wood, to be promised to each category of French people […] tens of billions of euros that we no longer have” – the one who made authority his trademark – yesterday by slapping a child who was picking his pockets, today by winning at Matignon against the will of Emmanuel Macron -, if finally François Bayrou was this famous providential man, propelled, at 73, to Matignon but with one eye on the Élysée cup of 2027?
The “third man” can of course dream of his presidential destiny, but for now, he must “deliver”. Because France is still waiting for a budget, and its public finances continue to slip. The Moody’s agency was not mistaken in downgrading France’s rating on December 13, and its scathing comment – it calls into question the “political fragmentation more likely to prevent significant budgetary consolidation” – responds to the mediocrity of our parties, incapable of the expected upsurge.
This mix between a lack of national vision, the priority given to each other’s careers and the Head of State’s disinterest in public accounts ends up being very expensive: each quarter, the debt swells by more than 50 billion, to reach 3,300 billion euros before the end of the year. A record. Will François Bayrou be the Turgot of the 21st century, who, appointed Controller General of Finances in 1774 by the young King Louis XVI, wrote to him: “No bankruptcy, no tax increase, no borrowing “? There remained the path of reforms, into which this liberal plunged: but the one who recommended “reducing expenditure below revenue” was fired two years later, and in 1788 France, in debt up to its neck, made default.
If, for François Bayrou, the budgetary project – on which the Barnier government stumbled – is Himalayan, it must also deal with a political vacuum comparable to the Mariana Trench. The dissolution of June took away everything, starting with the Gaullian logic of the Fifth Republic. Ministerial crises follow one another: four Prime Ministers this year, nearly one hundred and ten days without a full government or managing current affairs, a lifespan of ten months for Prime Ministers since Emmanuel Macron’s second term compared to thirty -two on average since 1958: it’s a return to the 4th! “The French Republic is, on the one hand, the one which is assailed by the most formidable problems and, on the other hand, the one whose governments are the most fragile and therefore the most feeble (without strength)”, analyzed a of its best connoisseurs, President Henri Queuille, in 1955. More than ever, it is time to retake the Fifth!
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