Michel Barnier did not want to raise his voice. It was without apparent anger, according to participants, that on Monday, November 4, the Prime Minister asked the members of his government to kindly show “team spirit”. “It is very important to look after the collective”, he insists from the Matignon council room, where the second government seminar is being held since the appointment, on September 21, of its 41 ministers and secretaries of state.
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Michel Barnier, who knows he is threatened at any time by a motion of censure, continues in a calm voice: “We will make progress to decide better together and listen to each other before making decisions, despite the extremely urgent circumstances. » Around the huge table covered in red, the audience is hardly moved. For good reason, the statement “aim at no one”, we swear on Rue de Varenne.
The Prime Minister, who imagines projecting his government into a reform plan lasting until 2027, defends a style which, unlike that of Emmanuel Macron, is not punctuated with punches on the table and reprimands towards his ministers. “He is not in the corporalization”, defends his office. Too bad if his “Frankenstein” government, according to someone close to the head of state, is made up of representatives of the hard right, centrists and former socialists who struggle to get along, criticize each other behind the scenes and sometimes openly challenge his authority.
“Michel Barnier is not a minister tamer! »
The former Socialist Party (PS) Didier Migaud, in court, like the Macronist Agnès Pannier-Runacher, in charge of the ecological transition, suggested, in mid-October, that they could slam the door if their budget was not suitable? He doesn't pick up. It also doesn't matter that the tenant of Place Beauvau, Bruno Retailleau, of the Les Républicains (LR) party, disturbs some of his counterparts from the left by talking about « mexicanisation » of the country, the day after dramatic events linked to drug trafficking.
The tenant of Rue de Varenne is not trying to lower the tension. He also remained silent when his minister responsible for daily security, Nicolas Daragon (LR), pleaded, on October 31, to regain control over migratory flows by attacking “the stranger” from the National Assembly. “The aggressor foreigner, out!” The stranger who rapes, out! The Islamist foreigner, out! The stranger thief, stalker, aggressor, three times out! »had asserted this close friend of Laurent Wauquiez, the leader of the LR deputies in the Assembly, receiving a standing ovation from the deputies of the National Rally (RN) and arousing the fear of another part of the Hemicycle. “There were several of us panicking”says the former government spokesperson, Prisca Thevenot, MP (Renaissance) for Hauts-de-Seine, estimating that“by imitating the RN, certain ministers will end up becoming RN”.
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