For 59 days, Emmanuel Macron went off in all directions, multiplying solitary initiatives and parallel channels, without much political logic, apparently. Multiple hypotheses were tested by his entourage, before Alexis Kohler, his main collaborator, and the RN, led him to resolve to appoint Michel Barnier, who was not his first choice, to Matignon.
After his defeat on July 7, Emmanuel Macron first decided to appoint a personality from “civil society”. In any case, this is what Thierry Solère, a former political advisor at the Élysée and still in contact with the president, told his entourage a few days after the legislative elections.
A way for Macron to maintain, at all costs, political leadership of the National Assembly, despite his defeat in the legislative elections, in the name of « l’union nationale ». An expression that Emmanuel Macron has not stopped using with his various interlocutors in recent weeks. “The president has always sought a solution that would avoid immediate censorship”they justify at the Élysée. Out of the question for him to accept a cohabitation, yet the logical political consequence of the bitter defeat of his camp. During the summer, the Élysée thus sounded out François Villeroy de Galhau, head of the Bank of France, or Jean-Dominique Senard, chairman of the board of directors of Renault.
