Decryption
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Struggling to find a new Prime Minister, the President is weakened by the officialization of the candidacy of his former head of government. Which takes precedence in the event of an early presidential election.
Are all the clocks out of whack in the former presidential camp? While one is in a hurry to get busy choosing a Prime Minister, the other, eyeing a completely different race, is keen to speed up in order to “the next presidential election.” After fifty days of vacancy at Matignon, the head of state continues to weigh each option. Two years and eight months before the end of the five-year term (on paper), Edouard Philippe has made his candidacy official, opening the hostilities of the post-Macron era.
It was another empty day at the Elysée on Wednesday. Bernard Cazeneuve or Xavier Bertrand? Between François Hollande’s former Prime Minister and Nicolas Sarkozy’s former minister, one from the PS, the other from LR, received successively on Monday, there is no ideal profile. “It didn’t go very well for Cazeneuve. Bertrand, for his part, won’t bother the President: becoming Prime Minister is his life’s dream,” says one of Macron’s interlocutors. Early in the afternoon, the microcosm was trembling when the rumor of an appointment spread, via a press release, at the end of the day. Some even speculated about a handover on rue de Varenne, without knowing whether Gabriel Attal would indeed pass the baton to the president of Hauts-de-France. At the same time,
