Friday, 8:30 a.m. Emmanuel Macron to François Bayrou: “I will appoint Sébastien Lecornu to Matignon.” Friday, 12:43 p.m., press release from the Elysée: “The President of the Republic has appointed Mr. François Bayrou Prime Minister, and tasked him with forming a government.”
Emmanuel Macron does not know what a president is. He saw himself as Jupiter, he acted head to head, and it was the same story with each appointment to Matignon, since the dissolution. He promises the overhang and his playmates, amazed, find him “stirring his porridge”, according to the exquisite expression of one of them. Terrified to see him getting entangled – again – in the consultations of the Socialist Party, the Republicans, the Ecologists, the Communists, etc., a friend, one of those who know him best, decided, during the weekend of December 7, to ‘to intervene. “You have to stop getting bogged down in this party shit, dare the skeptic to scold. The Fifth Republic was created against that!” The head of state doesn’t like it, and retorts: “You don’t understand anything! It’s not true, the French expect me to find the solution.” President Healer. After having “rebuilt Notre-Dame”, here he undoubtedly intends to embody “hope” by himself clearing the path and the horizon for the one he will install at Matignon.
The Riyadh Conversation
Emmanuel Macron does not know what a Prime Minister is. Otherwise, how could he have thought of appointing to the same position, at the same political moment, almost in the same hour, François Bayrou, the man with three Elysian candidacies and 40 years of political life, and Sébastien Lecornu, the young minister almost anonymous because of his concentration on his task? Because it’s not just the president who says it and Bayrou who hears it, there’s also Lecornu who knows that he won’t be able to shirk if the president asks him to. Between the Head of State and his Minister of Defense, the dialogue has never stopped. And intensified during their trip to Saudi Arabia. In front of Sébastien Lecornu and Jean-Noël Barrot, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and travel, Emmanuel Macron evokes his hypotheses for a renewed Matignon, talks about his desire to remain first in line, to no longer give up anything, especially not an ounce of power, to a Prime Minister. Michel Barnier vaccinated him. The tenant of the Quai d’Orsay insists on the need for the president to protect himself behind “a head of government who absorbs tensions”. A fuse, in short. “I’m a driver [d’électricité]observes the Minister of the Armed Forces. I am identified as being very related to you.”
His common sense and his frankness do not prevent the president from projecting himself with him at his side. On the contrary. What better assurance is being able to start doing everything yourself again? But because he knows the president well, Sébastien Lecornu remains cautious until the end. The evening of the vote on the motion of censure, he approached certain ministers likely to keep their place and passed them messages from Emmanuel Macron. It would be a question of not tormenting the left too much, of not annoying the right… As the week goes on, the cryptic exchanges turn into more direct conversations. To a leading minister, he confided his desire to see Gérald Darmanin move to Defense, and his wish to integrate the deputy for Alpes-Maritimes from the right Michèle Tabarot into the reshuffled government – a stone in the garden of Eric Ciotti from Nice; from another he asks for compromises and sets out his plan to coax – while pushing them away, obviously – Gabriel Attal and Laurent Wauquiez: offering the first Education and the second Bercy. Guaranteed refusals. But certainty for his interlocutors to have in front of them “someone who speaks like a future Prime Minister”.
Confidence on Nicolas Sarkozy
François Bayrou knows what a Prime Minister is. He has seen so many in his life… And criticized them so often for their docility. Also his conversations with Emmanuel Macron, on Thursday December 5 and then on Tuesday 10, are thorough, pointed, precise. National Education is an area dear to the mayor of Pau, so he quickly indicates to the Head of State that the presence of Anne Genetet on rue de Grenelle poses a problem for him. Last week, he informed the president that Xavier Bertrand had agreed to come on board, unlike Bernard Cazeneuve, who preferred to stay at the quayside than go to the Quai. Foreign Affairs, precisely. François Bayrou never forgets to defend the interests of his store, and this is understandable: it was he who created it, against all odds, against Chirac and Giscard. However, it turns out that it is a MoDem, Jean-Noël Barrot, who currently holds this prestigious ministry, and that he has no desire to give way, even if Bayrou is at Matignon. Emmanuel Macron validates. Isn’t life beautiful? The Béarnais confided it to an intimate friend: the president told him that he had called Nicolas Sarkozy – the centrist’s best enemy – to discuss his appointment. So it’s done!
So is it done? François Bayrou did not know Emmanuel Macron ten years ago, but he learned to understand the character. He knows he can change his mind. Except he doesn’t believe it? Not this time. Tuesday, at the end of the meeting with all parties at the Elysée, his discreet exchanges with the socialists fueled his optimism. They have no problem working with him, whatever they say publicly. Senator Patrick Kanner even slips in this sentence: “When we have taken the plunge, you will not let us go!” If the PS parliamentarians accept the principle of non-censorship, it is because there is a path to Matignon, almost a highway. On Wednesday, he even continued his work to clear the roadway. He phones Marine Le Pen to offer her a deal: rapid proportional representation against non-censorship. Michel Barnier, on this subject, failed. He won’t run away. The reluctance of Alexis Kohler or even Emmanuel Macron does not matter. Doesn’t he like to repeat: “Freedom is as necessary to me as the air I breathe, and to express it I trust myself, I know how to exercise it”?
“A facilitator” at Matignon
Beware of heavy goods vehicles. Thursday, someone close to François Bayrou receives a curious call. Curious by the name of the interlocutor, who does not call him every four mornings: it is the secretary general of the Elysée. Curious about the content, too: “The president is considering appointing a leader at the head of the government with strong ministers, someone who would not offend anyone.” A weak Prime Minister with a strong team? And why not Roland Lescure while we’re at it? This is the complete opposite of François Bayrou’s conception. Basically, what he most criticized Emmanuel Macron from the start was choosing Prime Ministers who were not up to the task. There is design for function, and there is character. The president of MoDem never imagined himself in the role of doormat, even less of the toy that we carry around to amuse the gallery. “The president never wanted to appoint Bayrou, he always intended to pull the plug at the last minute,” assures one of his strategists. Guaranteed pile-up…
When, this Friday morning, Emmanuel Macron announced to him, barely arrived, his intention to appoint Sébastien Lecornu, he did not see orange, the color of his party, but bright red, the state of his mind. In January, he had succeeded in opposing the promotion of the Minister of Defense – but did not know, horresco referencesthat it would therefore be Gabriel Attal. So if history repeats the dishes, he will break all the dishes. Since Thursday evening, François Bayrou has the feeling of being humiliated and this is not his habit. He had the night to prepare his words: “I came with you to do big things together, not small things. If you wish to do small things, I will leave you.”
I came to tell you that I’m leaving… Bayrou is leaving? “I’ll call you back quickly”: the president refuses the breakup. He will call her a quarter of an hour later. Forgotten the presidential desire to take control, the annoyance of “not being present at decisions”, as Emmanuel Macron deplored in front of a loved one. François Bayrou won. The president suffers.
This Friday morning, the Prime Minister cites another victory, that of François Mitterrand on May 10, 1981 – no more, no less. “At last the difficulties begin.” This for example: who to put in the Armies? One day, the future Prime Minister asked: “Are you going to war with Lecornu? I’m not!”
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