He is no longer quite Prime Minister, so why not taste, just for a moment, the life of a head of state? Saturday evening, at Notre-Dame, Michel Barnier jokes with Donald Trump about their respective ages: 73 for the first, 78 for the second. Youth, said Jules Romans, is the time we have ahead of us.
On Monday, the resigning Prime Minister receives a former French president for a private meeting agreed long ago. He and François Hollande get along well, speak informally to each other. However, it’s not every day that you have lunch with one of your executioners – the Corrézien is one of the 331 deputies to have voted for censure on Wednesday December 4. The two men explain the two reproaches which would have caused the end. Michel Barnier is not from the left, but the NFP has been demanding from the start that one of its own should be at the head of the government. There is nothing to say about that, there is little disputed evidence.
It is the second point which proves to be the most politically crucial: the Prime Minister would have been “dubbed” by the National Rally. This is a word that makes him jump. Knighted? No, tolerated. Of course, he knows that Emmanuel Macron, before appointing him, checked with Marine Le Pen that he would not be immediately overthrown, but that’s all. Michel Barnier does not want to fall on the side of the extreme right. Marine Le Pen is, however, the main character in his fall. He received it, instructed the ministers to do the same, transmitted the message that she would be welcomed at Matignon if she asked, which she refrained from doing – he did not escape to the Prime Minister as to the Elysée at the moment, it was not really the same approach. Since Brexit, the former negotiator considers that it is necessary to speak to those who see themselves as victims of the system, at the risk of never attracting them again.
The frustration of having run out of time
Michel Barnier has reread in recent days the declarations of the president of the RN group to the Assembly since the beginning, his red lines from October – immigration, proportional, the purchasing power of the weakest -, his variations in last days – like when she starts talking about biometric vital cards on the phone, even though she never mentioned the subject during the meeting three days earlier – to convince herself of two things: the hardening of the fateful days will not hardly concerned objects budgetary, it was political – Jordan Bardella cited in front of an interlocutor from Matignon the other European countries where playing the game did not bring luck to the populists – and judicial – the change of tone in Marine Le Pen’s tweets since the requisitions at the trial parliamentary assistants hit the entourage of the head of government.
The time had come for cathedrals, he believed, he hoped. Michel Barnier would have dreamed of being a builder, he will have to be content with having wiped the plaster. The frustration of having lacked time, the conviction of having advanced the common spirit within a base which until then had spent its years fighting each other more than collaborating. Gabriel Attal asked Marc Fesneau last week how to improve things when the next host of Matignon appears. “Stop annoying the Prime Ministers who may be arriving…”, suggested the centrist.
Because Michel Barnier’s difficulties first came from the camp that was supposed to be his. Which was not entirely true: no doubt with Edouard Philippe he was able to discuss the feeling of being an intruder when you come from LR and find yourself facing Macronists who have have become accustomed, since 2017, to considering that power belongs to them.
Michel Barnier knew little about Gabriel Attal and the EPR deputies, it would have taken more time to be less surprised. Michel Barnier knew Laurent Wauquiez well, and that is undoubtedly why he was not surprised. Not surprised that the president of the LR group in the Assembly invites himself without warning to an 8 p.m. broadcast on TF1 to claim success on the revaluation of pensions; that he writes a victory statement, again, on the renunciation of seven hours of free work per year, while the Prime Minister had told him that he would declare on television, a few hours later, his hostility to the measure. It is not with his experience that Michel Barnier will discover the importance of personal agendas in political life, is it?
Disagreements with Emmanuel Macron
Michel Barnier also thought he knew Emmanuel Macron. In Brussels, he had often worked with him as deputy secretary general of the Elysée, then with him as minister, then with him as head of state. But sharing the same sincere European conviction is not everything with a president who has even more facets than he has hats. A president not necessarily unhappy today to have gotten rid of this trigger-happy Prime Minister. Let no one come and tell Michel Barnier that the Head of State had advised him another method… Bilaterally then, three days before the formation of the government, in mid-September, with all the members of the common base , during the preparation of the general policy declaration afterwards, and even for the budget, a sort of short-term program, he spoke about the substance, called for proposals, and noted, above all, the extent of the disagreements.
He never hid it: he did not seek to become leader of the majority, because no one recognized him as such and there was no majority – which are certainly two good reasons, but also two points of weakness. He denies having called into question the supply policy, of having reduced support for businesses, he has only reduced the slope of increase in reductions in charges. But he always believed, even before arriving at Matignon, in the need to work for better tax justice, a weak link in his eyes in the economic policy led by Emmanuel Macron since 2017.
Methodical, serious: you can’t make a Savoyard again. Today no one talks about the deficit, which is heading towards 7% if we are not careful, no one talks about the debt anymore – on these subjects, at the Elysée or in Parliament, he felt good alone. He thought he would be there for two and a half years, being able to reform the country in depth once the budget was passed. He was so happy to finally arrive where he no longer thought he would arrive, as the just reward for a life devoted to public affairs. “The repair of an error in history”, observed, more piquantly, Gabriel Attal. Michel Barnier knows that, barring an unforeseen and therefore improbable turnaround, the sequel will be written without him. If the censure of another proves more difficult to obtain, at least he will console himself by having done useful work.
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