“It’s the economy, stupid“(It’s the economy that counts, idiot). The slogan dates from 1992, whispered to Bill Clinton by one of his advisors, and it revealed itself as a winning strategy to win at the polls. The day after of Standard and Poor’s decision to maintain France’s rating, Bruno Le Maire – who happy on X of “this decision […] consistent with the government’s choices in matters of public finances” – does not discover America. “The French nation needs to restore public finances, it is my role and I am all alone, he often remarks. I will not let the debt drift, I will take everything, even unpopularity. The role of the Minister of Finance is to act as a bulwark and I will act as a bulwark.”
But the sunshine of a cold Friday does not hide the clouds of autumn. The risks of a slowdown in activity weigh heavily on the country. “The economic context will be the subject of the coming months,” notes someone close to Emmanuel Macron. This has not escaped Bruno Le Maire, who has been playing a new score for several weeks, closely observed by the Elysée: “The best sales representative of macronism today is him!” Wake up, the president said. For a long time, the host of Bercy got up early. Here he is shaking the coconut tree with his shocking proposal to align the duration of compensation for unemployed people over 55 with those of other unemployed people. Not even afraid: he always considered that the country, until the presidential majority, was prisoner of an ideological debate in the hands of the left.
Bruno Le Maire does not discover America, but wants to set out to conquer other continents. Like Gérald Darmanin in Tourcoing at the end of August (with mixed success), the Minister of the Economy took a very notable side step on November 21, by receiving hundreds of elected officials at Bercy to hold a speech essentially about authority, and much about the condemnation of ambient declinism. A single invited journalist, a long, very elaborate text sent to the editorialists to be sure that nothing escapes them – the anti-Tourcoing. A small step aside, a big step forward in displaying your ambition. Bruno Le Maire has believed for some time now that “the authority of the rule will be the big question in the next presidential election”. He decides to speak… about authority.
Already in November 2022, he insisted in front of his family on “the need for the French to see that the rules are respected: the good citizen needs to know that at the end of the film, it is he who wins”. The tragic news of recent weeks gives full relevance to this idea, the time had therefore come to try to capitalize a little on a reflection that the tenant of Bercy has been sharpening for many months: how to give force to the law?
“It’s the president who normally makes the 1000 mayors…” slips a minister. But Bruno Le Maire decided to move, to accelerate, to expand. Here he is, innocently saying to the councilors: “We had to change the room. Usually, it’s a slightly smaller room upstairs, but there were too many of you.”
The time has come to get agitated. Comfortable in 2022 in an enlarged Bercy, Bruno Le Maire even thought that he could become the successor, candidate of a central bloc that Emmanuel Macron would leave in his hands, let’s digress a little. “He said to himself ‘I will be the best natural student of the Macronie’ and then he saw beep beep, pffffffiou, pass in front of him at great speed, a new model student of the Macronie called Attal”, says a member of the government. The breakthrough of this young minister, never shy of political blows, more natural heir of macronism, called for a rapid reaction on his part, and too bad if the reception of the mayors “causes chatter in the political cottages”, he, Bruno Le Maire, “does not draw any plans on the comet” and stands “at the service of the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the government, the majority, at the service of the French”. At their service, yes, but different from them, different especially from the first of them. The guests gathered on November 21 did not miss a bit of this joyful tirade: “We are happy because we are similar.” Fine connoisseurs of the field, of the local election, follow his gaze. In a small group, Bruno Le Maire theorizes the desires of the French, this “contradictory and schizophrenic people”, he says. “They have two models: Mitterrand or the 35-year-old.” Two five-year terms of the second, soon the return of the first? Bruno Le Maire never dreamed so much of Mitterrand…
Wake up ! From Bercy the vapors of reflection emanate, from the Elysée the smoke of the pipe of peace emerges. The president would have smoothed his relations with a man he has always distrusted until now. And who, last year, exasperated him by demanding a strange position, cut out just for him: Prime Minister while retaining the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Or the all-powerful rue de Varenne. Unthinkable.
The Mayor doesn’t like to think small. That he now wants to stand out in the eyes of the French and not in relation to the president can only delight Emmanuel Macron. He does not reveal himself publicly, but he does not want to write the future with yesterday’s solutions. He strongly doubts that the return to multiple mandates, suggested for example by Edouard Philippe, is a path for the future. It is not far from thinking that the current avenues for restoring order are somewhat dated. Bruno the renewal, as he no longer says (this was his slogan during the cursed right-wing primary in 2016). It happened tomorrow.