In front of some of her colleagues in the government, she sometimes laughs to herself: “Being questioned by Mediapart is the best way to stay in government.” Not everyone can say the same and it is not certain, this time, that the combative, even rebellious spirit of Emmanuel Macron in times of crisis is enough. Entangled in the case of the allocation of the Marianne fund revealed by the weekly Marianne, Marlène Schiappa will be heard this Wednesday morning by the Senate inquiry committee and her days in government are undoubtedly numbered. In the ranks of the executive, we know, especially since the McKinsey controversy, to what extent everything relating to the misuse of public funds arouses epidermal reactions in public opinion and, perhaps more seriously still, feeds the nagging distrust of the French towards their political leaders. A minister, a pure Macronist, imagines no other outcome than a departure for the one who was at the very top of the chain of responsibility: “Macron must fire her, it may not produce a big change, but it will take away at least one ball that we have been dragging for a while.”
Last July, by landing at the Social and Solidarity Economy and Associative Life, the former Minister Delegate for Citizenship agreed at the same time to be demoted to the rank of Secretary of State: a tumble in the protocol order, when all his other comrades returned have been maintained, if not promoted. “Never, but then never would I have accepted that”, reacted several of his colleagues during the past year… not without a small hint of bad faith. Proof that Marlène Schiappa finds her account elsewhere than in hierarchical pride. Sign, also, that the executive couple, after having built the skeleton of its new governmental architecture, was persuaded in the last hours to need it somewhere in the device. At a time when Emmanuel Macron and ÉIisabeth Borne are making the choice – which they will regret later… – of technicality among newcomers (Colonna in Foreign Affairs, Ndiaye in Education, Braun in Health, Abdul Malak in Culture, Combe aux Solidarités…), keeping a gun carrier identified by the French with you might not be a bad idea.
A special status in Macronie
The members of the government who were able to emerge during the first five-year term can be counted on the fingers of two hands; those from “civil society” on the knuckles of a single finger. Marlène Schiappa is indisputably part of this restricted circle. For six years, the Parisian “made swerves which sometimes looked like going off the road”, says a close friend of Emmanuel Macron, but the head of state has always been magnanimous with her. How not to accept this form of audacity? Risk-taking, the potential slippage, are an integral part of his game while counter-attacking. Marlène Schiappa, who opened the candidate’s meetings in 2017, has acquired a special status in Macronie, where unfailing loyalty is rewarded, the too rare talent to address the French in their own words… and where proximity with Brigitte Macron is a significant asset. How many are there in the ranks of the government, as experienced as they are, to have discreetly slipped away when the rumble of the Yellow Vests intensified? For months, the historic walker, often alone, played her role as a shield. The leader knows how to recognize the hussars ready to sacrifice themselves.
Only, for a year, the rising star of Macronie has paled. “There are times when too much transgression ends up damaging the image of the representatives of the Nation”, continues the same fellow traveler of the president. His interview and photos in the magazine Playboy at the height of the protest against the pension reform made people scream at the Château as in the team of Élisabeth Borne, where we were only informed much too late of the initiative of the Secretary of State. “To talk about yourself, to talk about yourself at all costs”: this is the maxim followed by Marlène Schiappa according to a former pillar of Matignon during the first five-year term. Until then, this slight narcissism was excused to him as long as his speech acted as a megaphone as much as a lightning rod, but the affair of the Marianne fund has undoubtedly eroded it definitively. Devitalized. Marlène Schiappa is no longer really Marlène Schiappa. Is it possible to remedy this?