Let’s open our good old Le Robert dictionary, which is gathering dust on the living room shelf. Telegraphist. Noun and adjective: specialist in the transmission and reception of telegraphic messages. Certainly, the context has changed, the era is live on the news channels continuously, but the concept remains the same for those who have been assigned this role. This was particularly the case of Elisabeth Borne this Wednesday. From the Elysée press room, the Prime Minister, dressed all in black, presented the government’s roadmap for the weeks and months to come, in accordance with what she had been asked to do nine days ago during his speech, the tenant of the premises. “It was, more or less, only the concrete variation of what the president announced”, sums up a minister. By “wetting” more without even once pronouncing the name of the one who occupies Matignon, Emmanuel Macron had then reduced Elisabeth Borne to this function of “specialist in the transmission” of the calendar which he had himself concocted. But who decreed that the telegrapher should annihilate any ambition to do politics?
“So, was it sopo?” Slips a member of the government, usually rather pro-Borne, a few minutes after the press conference that he did not have the pleasure of listening to. Understand: “soporific”. To believe that he expected it when leaving the Castle: “This morning, in the Council of Ministers, she read us her thing… She lost the fishing, she no longer has the grinta. I found her extinct . It’s difficult for her at the moment”, he regrets. Is this really where the shoe pinches? Definitely not. Especially since Elisabeth Borne has never impressed anyone with her public speaking, her many talents are elsewhere. The exercise imposed on the Prime Minister was not easy for the one who works day and night. Who is also trying, as best they can, to see beyond July 14, the date chosen by the Head of State to “take a first assessment” furiously rhyming with reshuffle. Only, in the political crisis we are experiencing, where the French are increasingly struggling to believe in the effectiveness of public policies, was it necessary to be so abstruse?
This roadmap was, no doubt, crystal clear to those who practice the technocratic language as regularly as the pens who wrote it. But what about everyone else, the vast majority of the population? It is not enough to use variations of the word “concrete” twelve times to be. How to “respond directly to the concerns and expectations of the French people”, as the Prime Minister declared in the preamble when, on work for example, she assures us that she wants to “build with the trade unions and employers’ organizations a social agenda for a new pact of life at work”? How can we imagine a desirable future when we hear that “the France 2030 plan” will continue to be deployed in all territories? Or again, about security: “We are going to deploy a ‘republican action force’, with exceptional means in a territory for a given period”? In transmission, a translation component should have been added. Is there a communicator on the plane? “Unfortunately, this is not new,” laments another member of the government.
Of course, there is no question here of asserting that communication should prevail over ideas. But it would be just as naive to think that it is secondary to creating a feeling of membership. The first to suffer from this lack of political sense is the government itself, starting perhaps with Elisabeth Borne, who is playing for her survival in the next 80 days. Even though many draft answers are provided on the sharing of value, the ecological transition, the reindustrialization of the country, the rehabilitation of local public services, the best intentions in the world are struggling to break the sound barrier – and , even worse, that of trust – if they have nothing tangible for those who listen to them. Emmanuel Macron was already convinced that there was no better than him to explain his policy to the French, this Wednesday he is not about to change his mind.