“François Bayrou has loaded dice in his hands”

Lhe face of François Bayrou, twenty-eighth prime minister of the V^e République, is familiar to the French. His career is known: local elected official in Béarn, minister of national education in the 1990s, unsuccessful candidate in the presidential elections of 2002, 2007 and 2012, and kingmaker of the 2017 election – the story held up until then that he had brought Emmanuel Macron into the Elysée while refraining from launching a fourth time in the race for head of state; What followed for him was a short-lived stint at Place Vendôme as Keeper of the Seals. Here he is, seven years later, forcing the hand of the tenant of Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré to move him to Rue de Varenne. Unlike many of those who obtained ministerial positions under Emmanuel Macron, François Bayrou owes him nothing politically. But, if he now takes the title of head of government, the reality of his position is doubly biased by the will of the head of state and by the very personal reading of the latter's institutions.

Emmanuel Macron's sixth prime minister, François Bayrou has loaded dice in his hands. Pipés, because the Head of State has refused, since July, to translate into action the result of the summer's legislative elections, during which the majority of French people expressed their refusal to see the extreme right in power and his desire for an alternation in relation to the policies pursued for seven years. Once again, the coalition that came out on top at the end of this election (the New Popular Front) was not called upon by the Head of State to form a government, in defiance of institutional logic and despite the lessons that he should have drawn from a historical censorship, only the second in the history of the V^e Republic.

However, the dissatisfaction expressed by the mayor of Pau with regard to some of the presidential decisions cannot mask the obvious: much more than an extension of Macronism, François Bayrou is its origin. Since the beginning of the 2000s, he has taken up the position “neither left nor right” which Emmanuel Macron then adopted. The current President of the Republic theorized on this basis a “progressivism” supposed to disqualify all choices diverging from one's own line, in particular through hastily and presumptuously indictments of irresponsibility against political projects defending the reestablishment of tax justice, the French social model and the strengthening of the means and presence of services public. In other words, François Bayrou, who has placed members of his political party in all governments since 2017, cannot in any way embody alternation. Which has a simple consequence: François Bayrou, prime minister, in no way derives his legitimacy from the ballot boxes.

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