“I thought Emmanuel Macron was my best friend. In the end, I was perhaps the last of the naive.” He had arranged to meet us in a Lyon traffic jam, on November 24, 2021. Since his departure from Place Beauvau, Gérard Collomb had rather avoided the media but he had agreed, that day, to return at length to his relations with the president of the Republic and on the action he had taken at the Ministry of the Interior.
It’s the story of a missed appointment, of a disillusionment like politics too often causes. When he arrived at the Elysée on May 14, 2017, Emmanuel Macron still remembered what he owed to the mayor of Lyon. During the transfer of power, he confided to François Hollande: “I owe him everything.” Gérard Collomb collected dozens of sponsorships for the candidate, he tried to calm some of his ardor or his lyrical flights of fancy – disapproving, for example, of the choice of the title Revolution for the book published by the future president – he dissuaded him during the campaign from proposing the decriminalization of the consumption of certain drugs. He is the incarnation of the old world facing the one who believes that with him the new world will arise.
At the table that day, Gérard Collomb remembers how his life turned upside down, the beginning of the troubles which would go so far as to cause him to lose his most precious asset, the town hall of Lyon. It is not far from the Capitole to the Tarpéienne rock, and even less from Place Bellecour to Place Beauvau. “Gérard, what do you want, minister or the party?” It’s asked Macron style, between two doors and between two towers, those of the presidential election. He, the decentralizer, does not answer anything, he expects that he will soon be offered one of these ministries of the City or of Regional Planning which make the great local elected officials happy. Emmanuel Macron’s question was obviously not one, a few days later, the question became an order: “Gérard, you must be Minister of the Interior.”
Here he is, Minister of State, at the top of the government table, just behind the Prime Minister. Gérard Collomb jumps into the void. In this era, left-wing Macronists are still legion, in fact there are some, but not from that left which leads some to have the shame of a gazelle when it comes to security or immigration. As a result, he is mocked, or he makes people smile when he responds to Lyon, whatever the subject.
No more laughing: he has trouble with the Macronist group in the National Assembly when he makes him swallow the Silt law (internal security and the fight against terrorism) while many, the sweet dreamers, had arrived at the Palais Bourbon convinced that the state of emergency in force since the attacks of 2015 was worthy of the world before. And this is nothing compared to the earthquake caused by the asylum and immigration law, a trauma still very present in everyone’s minds at the time when Gérald Darmanin moves forward with his text. Of course, Emmanuel Macron never disavows it publicly, but this president can say white and be black, or the opposite, or both “at the same time”.
Worse, it has its gray areas. In July 2018, THE World reveals the Benalla affair, named after this mission manager who at the Elysée often interfered in what did not concern him, for example the maintenance of order during the May 1 demonstrations. Imagine Gérard Collomb, the best informed man in France according to the legend that sticks to the skin of every Minister of the Interior, and this time the Macronist least aware of the turpitudes of Alexandre Benalla.
Four times he is tempted to resign
Between the president and his minister of state, there is now more than a sheet of cigarette paper, there is a copy of L’Express. That of September 19, 2018, in which Gérard Collomb announces that he will be a candidate for the municipal elections in March 2020. And that he will leave his post a year before. Bazaar at the top of the State, it will quickly bend the saplings.
Exclusive major interview with Gérard Collomb at L’Express, on newsstands September 19, 2018.
© / The Express
The story is stunning. The famous sentence he said when he left – “Today, we live side by side […]I fear that tomorrow, we will live face to face” – and which has been cited a lot since his death on Saturday evening, he had already used it in 2015, in a PS congress – but who had heard it, who remembered?
Once, twice, three times, even four times, he had threatened to slam the door. Emmanuel Macron had always retained him but each time Gérard Collomb realized more and more that he did not have the influence he expected on the president. And that the presidential majority had not found its unity on the sovereign subjects which concerned it more and more.
A few days before our exchange, Gérard Collomb met the Head of State in Lyon, for the international catering fair. Never shy of words of love, this president. Except there is no longer any proof, only the poison of doubt. “I thought it was good, but after a while you don’t know what’s good and what’s not.” What if Gérard Collomb had, in saying this, painted the sharpest portrait of Emmanuel Macron?