Elisabeth Borne would have enough to make nightmares. She heard on television, at the end of October, Emmanuel Macron wishing “an alliance”, it was his word, with the deputies of LR who showed a constructive attitude in the National Assembly. Three days earlier, in Sunday newspaper, Nicolas Sarkozy had called on the president to “cross the Rubicon more frankly”: “Call it centre-right, centre, republican right, it doesn’t matter: the country’s strategic axis is clearly there. If I had one wish, it doesn’t matter. is that the political matrix of the president is closer to the matrix of the country as I feel it.” If the two heads of state imposed their points of view, she would have to surrender. It would take another prime minister to personalize a new political scheme.
Elisabeth Borne opened her eyes and ears. This November 28, opposite her, in the music pavilion at the end of the park of the Matignon hotel, is Nicolas Sarkozy. The same one who, a few days later, will publicly repeat that “President Macron could have an absolute majority”: “He should take into account all those who did not vote for the motions of censure, for example. Pompidou said that it It is always the strongest, that is to say the president, who must reach out first.” She, at Matignon, immediately concluded from her interviews with the political groups three things: a “coalition” would not be possible, not in conformity with French customs; LR would not change its position during the five-year term – it remains convinced today that this party has no desire to govern during this term and that it only thinks of the presidential election of 2027, judging that to associate to the government weakens it; it was therefore necessary to favor “overtaking”.
The surpassing, it is her. She sometimes laughs when Bruno Le Maire also pretends to embody her – “Have you ever seen Bruno take a measure on the left?”. She does not want the immigration bill to be exclusively branded with the iron of the right. “We are not seeking to split or multiply purely symbolic measures”, she warned on December 6, promising a “balanced” text and taking care to “blow the neck of received ideas”: “No , state medical aid does not feed irregular immigration.” It would not necessarily have occurred to him to quote a major figure of French Action, the historian Jacques Bainville, as the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin did at the podium. As she begins the battle for pensions, she insists on the progress made possible by the negotiations, for example on long careers and hardship. It is not she who will overwhelm “poor Laurent Berger”, she still hopes that the reforming unions will accept the progress made possible by the project.
Elisabeth Borne, very dubious about the influence that Nicolas Sarkozy exerts on the LR parliamentarians, remained wisely seated until the end. Not like Richard Ferrand. One day last spring, the former president of the National Assembly, from the ranks of the Socialist Party, shared the table with the former head of state when, after an hour, tired of hearing him wanting to rain and shine in Macronie, obviously for the benefit of the right, he had taken his clicks and his slaps.
They are a significant number in this case, who did not go on the En Marche adventure to end up with an agreement in good and due form with the right. For them, the original macronism of 2017 would not survive it. Agnès Pannier-Runacher is one of them. The Minister for Energy Transition willingly claims her left-wing sensitivity. And it is not unhappy to prove, through Parliament’s examination of its renewable energy bill, that the alliance with LR is not the solution to all ills, that another choice is possible. “It’s important to show that we can co-construct a text, she confides. No doubt it will be the left that in the end will make the balance, but it is a text that will suit the greatest number, adopted according to the culture of Europe. The move is more powerful than a coalition with the right.”
Opposing methods in government
The path she takes is exactly the opposite of that of Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. He thinks that the country, that the voters and that the National Assembly (which ends up doing a lot) lean to the right: this is therefore where we must find the way for the adoption of the bill on the immigration. Because he has noticed that Marine Le Pen appreciates being welcomed into the ministries, he never misses an opportunity to invite her, her or the deputies of her party, at the same time as the other groups, yesterday on separatism or the modernization of the police, today on immigration. Agnès Pannier-Runacher, for her part, “forgot” to receive the finalist of the last presidential election and she did not “deepen” her relationship with the RN group: in her eyes, LFI deserves consideration, not the RN .
It even happens – depending on the day – that Emmanuel Macron is… a macronist. This agreement with the right, he talks about it on television but does he really want it? He doesn’t really give himself the means to obtain it. Two figures are in favor of it: Nicolas Sarkozy – we will agree that his case is singular – and Jean-François Copé. The mayor of Meaux, former boss of the UMP, crossed paths with the president’s wife, he crossed paths with the secretary general of the Elysée Palace Alexis Kohler, and he is still waiting for the slightest sign from the Elysée. As Opinion told it, Emmanuel Macron tested Gérard Larcher on the possibility of a “framework agreement”, without being surprised by the end of inadmissibility of the President of the Senate. The head of state’s zigzags never cease to amaze. He was more than ready, in May, to appoint, after Edouard Philippe and Jean Castex, a woman who came from the right, Catherine Vautrin, to Matignon, before giving in to pressure from his friends. So it was Elisabeth Borne. All that to ogle at LR six months later, but reluctantly, when the pension reform and the immigration bill are looming, to fall on the side where these texts could make it lean. Scoliosis can also appear in adulthood.