This second five-year term like no other is far from over, yet 2027 and its cohort of putative candidates are already moving forward. This last reshuffle with Gabriel Attal at its head – and that puts Rachida Dati back in the saddle – is a new turning point. Behind the scenes, some are learning to dodge tripping, others are familiarizing themselves with the art of conspiracy, in short, everyone is preparing for the post-Emmanuel Macron era with rigor and determination. The L’Express political department offers to help you follow, thanks to a weekly meeting on our websitethe progress of those ambitious people who hope to climb, quickly and without injury, the steps of power.
The secrets of Macron’s speech for the Manouchian ceremony…
By their own admission, his advisors had never seen the president “so exhausted” after a speech. “He embodied it,” murmurs one of them. A sign of the importance given to this moment, eight hands worked on writing the text. The speech advisor Baptiste Rossi was asked to provide a first framework, then weighted with “political signifier” by the memory advisor Bruno-Roger Petit, then tinged with literary formulas thanks to the intervention of Jonathan Guémas, and, finally, patinated by the president himself. “Communist ideal” is Emmanuel Macron’s discovery. “He was very proud of it,” attests one of his strategists. “Because communism starts from a good feeling, from an ideal which certainly ends badly…” After the pantheonization of Missak and Mélinée Manouchian, the members of the Armenian community and the artists who participated in the ceremony were invited to a dinner in the village hall of the Elysée. The Fire group! Chatterton, whose extremely touching interpretation of The Red Poster was greeted, was strategically placed at the table of special advisor Jonathan Guémas, passionate about music.
…and a last minute guest
If Emmanuel Macron invited all the representatives of the elected parties for the tribute to Missak and Mélinée Manouchian on February 21, there was one who was not at all included in the protocol: Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The rebellious leader is no longer elected for anything and is not even leader of his party, France Insoumise, a position occupied by Manuel Bompard under the title of “coordinator”. Being absent from the pantheonization of communist heroes who died for France was unimaginable for Mélenchon, almost upsetting even, especially when Marine Le Pen was there. Monday, two days before the event, he therefore asked the Elysée to be invited to the tribute. “We invited him immediately,” we confirm at the Château. And Mélenchon, leaving the Pantheon, confided his “secret jubilation” at seeing, he said, “the extreme right on its knees before the communist resistance”.
Macron, the agricultural crisis? “It drives him crazy.”
Emmanuel Macron is very concerned about the farmers’ crisis, people around him say. “He believes that on the three pillars of income, standards, ecology, he had good intuitions, specifies an Elysian advisor. However, it exploded precisely on these three points because things were not do it, it drives him crazy!” So, there is no longer any question of leaving others to maneuver, so the president exclaimed during an Elysian meeting: “I am going to put a lot of capital into making things really happen!” You always have to do everything yourself when you are president.
Oh injustice…
It is a document that is proudly passed from hand to hand, from office to office, at the Elysée. Daily headlines The voice of the North, dated February 6. “Batteries: 17,000 jobs to fill” can be read in the headline. This good news which is becoming rare, these little signals which reassure the President of the Republic and his entourage. “It’s the fruit of Emmanuel Macron’s policy on the automobile industry,” says an advisor. “It didn’t happen overnight, it’s a slow process but the results are there.” Reindustrialization in France, a subject that the Head of State intends to highlight when the time for his assessment comes, but especially under Marine Le Pen’s nose and beard. “She will never be able to explain to her voters in the North that all her jobs were created thanks to her,” continues the same advisor proudly.
…O infamy
Conversely, still at the Château, we have little taste for the criticisms of the writers on his declaration in Humanity where he judges that Marine Le Pen’s party does not fit “into the republican arc”. A step aside from his Prime Minister Gabriel Attal who registered them there. And a step aside from himself which scratched Elisabeth Borne who had described the RN as the “heir of Pétain” party… Could the president have (again) changed his mind as he was preparing to bring Missak Manouchian into the Pantheon? “It’s Pavlovian to hit the president on the subject of the RN, sighs our advisor. We have not done morality, but politics. Can we question the conscience of Marine Le Pen who dares to present herself to the tribute from an immigrant communist resistance fighter? In the end, it is always Macron who loses and the RN quietly continues to victimize itself.” It’s hard to be a president.
Jordan Bardella the liberal… and his limits
This didn’t escape anyone’s notice. The president of the RN has been making eyes at the right for months. Trips to companies, multiplication of liberal declarations, demands in favor of the market, nothing is left to chance. But on the right, we look at the MEP and his “crude strategy” with an amused eye. “It’s so simplistic,” laughs a MEP. He’s playing with too little substance, he thinks it’s enough to say he’s pro-business when he has absolutely no political autonomy and is not a decision-maker. It was nothing.”
Sarah Knafo, candidate for the European elections?
The question has been raised for several months, and Eric Zemmour’s partner and advisor leaves doubts lingering. Will she be a candidate on the Reconquest list for the European elections, alongside Marion Maréchal? Within the far-right party, they assure that their decision has been made. “She is convinced about changing roles, she talks about it privately, she is going to go for it.” The person concerned, for her part, assures that her decision has not yet been made. You still have to be able to be elected.
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