How good it is to forget everything. A day of political consultations, a press release sent early in the evening, discussions at a standstill with the New Popular Front, still no one at Matignon or almost… And at the Elysée, this evening of Monday, August 26, conversations that bounce back, laughter that crackles: between Emmanuel Macron, apparently relaxed, and his guests, not a word of politics. Private dinner, indicates his unofficial agenda, the one reserved for internal use. His friends gathered around the table can’t believe it: the president doesn’t seem to make any effort not to glance at his phone. Provoking chaos then leaving the torments and pains to others. The privilege of someone who believes he is the master of everything. The political sky above him can collapse, and the hypothesis of a common path with the left can collapse, he doesn’t care if he remains at the center of the game.
They have not spared their efforts, however, those around him, who are worried to see him thus searching, ferreting, fiddling, in search of the ideal epilogue of the dissolution episode. “Why does he put himself in the middle of everything?” laments one of his strategists. François Bayrou did his best to convince him to appoint a Prime Minister in charge of leading the consultations, in vain. And what about this friend, as severe as he is candid, who scolded the head of state who had come to seek advice and counsel: “You should have gone to the Lanterne, asked a guy to receive them all in your place; people voted against you three times in a row, so you can’t organize the solution in any case!” As if letting others do it didn’t mean, in Emmanuel Macron’s mind, giving up a share of power… And taking the risk that incapable people would damage the record more surely than he himself? Insane.
This summer, however, the president had a nightmare. “A Liz Truss crisis,” he whispered, frightened, to one of his interlocutors who asked him about the possibility of appointing Lucie Castets Prime Minister. “If I appoint her or a representative of the NFP, they will repeal the pension reform, they will increase the minimum wage to 1600 euros, the financial markets will panic and France will plunge,” he stated in essence. Strict and sincere conclusion: “I am not ready to take this risk.” When the dissolution provoked to avoid stumbling over the budget vote in the fall turns into a boomerang.
A Prime Minister “before the end of the week”
But can he decide? “He decides because he is President of the Republic and he won these legislative elections, that’s clear,” says a former traveling companion ironically. Clearly, this thwarted relationship between Emmanuel Macron and reality continues to bear fruit. A minister, a seasoned politician, notes: “He gives the impression that he does not consider that a policy very different from the one he has been pursuing for the past 7 years should be pursued. He has not fully understood that he does not make the country’s policy alone and that he does not make the government alone.” A refusal of a reality that is also apparent in the wait.
The head of state is certainly free to choose Matignon (article 8), but the head of state is obliged to exercise his authority by appointing a Prime Minister; is the passing of time unconstitutional? So that this little tune does not drown out the voice of the leader, at the Elysée, in recent days, they have searched and scribbled on a piece of paper: “Belgium in 2020: 493 days to appoint a government, Spain in 2023: 121 days, Germany in 2018: 161 days.” When we compare ourselves, we console ourselves. Laurent Wauquiez can ask the president to “stop procrastinating”, he still has time not to rush. Receiving the representatives of the Liot group on Tuesday August 27, Emmanuel Macron nevertheless wanted to reassure them by promising a Prime Minister “before the end of the week”.
The name of someone capable of embodying “a form of cohabitation” still needs to appear, they say at the Elysée. “Political or technical?”, that is the fashionable question. Yaël Braun-Pivet puts forward the name of Didier Migaud, who was a member of parliament for 22 years, general rapporteur of the budget, president of the Finance Committee, mayor, regional councilor. A political CV as long as your arm, but the former president of the Court of Auditors is now seen as too technical by the head of state.
Cazeneuve, Bertrand, Lombard… or someone else?
Eric Lombard is too; Michel Barnier is less so but… Emmanuel Macron juggles with one name, then two, then three, to the point of making the supposed ones who have sometimes become contenders dizzy. Thus Xavier Bertrand does not remember having seen the president during the summer. In Emmanuel Macron’s entourage, some swear that a first meeting took place at the end of July and a second at the end of August, in Le Touquet where both were invited to the TBM, an electronic music festival. The sequence lends itself to secrecy. “We were each at one end of the guest area, certifies the head of the Hauts de France region – who specifies that he exchanges with close intermediaries. Every year the organizers place us at opposite ends to avoid us crossing paths.” Despite the distance, the head of state found in Bertrand a “very motivated” candidate for Matignon. All it took was a sign.
He, on Wednesday, August 28, had still not received any. No sign is certainly not a bad sign. For many, Bernard Cazeneuve has the ideal profile, he corresponds to the “identical portrait”, according to François Bayrou who was convinced by the summer and a meeting with the former Prime Minister. He also has the skill to remind his close relations that he is “in the opposition”, ideal for installing this cohabitation that does not say its name. There is only one problem, Emmanuel Macron sees all the profit he could draw from a statesman, respected on the right as well as on the left, but he knows that appointing him would be to return to the old world, to the Hollande presidency. Worse, to make the epic that began in 2017 a parenthesis since he was the last Prime Minister before.
The argument provokes real reluctance in the president, notes a leading Macronist. This time, a choice must be made. “What is unbearable for Emmanuel Macron is not losing, it is that someone wins,” observes a close friend. From this point of view, the dissolution has at least some virtue. Everyone has lost, but the Elysée tenant continues to make people talk with the slightest of his silences. The only defeat is oblivion.
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