Politics is such a small world. This Monday, November 25, Laurent Saint-Martin finds himself in the Senate chamber facing Claude Raynal. One, the Macronist minister of public accounts, must defend a fairly austere budget. The other, the socialist president of the finance committee, has, for weeks, not had harsh enough words against the successive governments which “take from the poor to help the rich”.
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Everything separates them? In public, everyone praises the other and does not hesitate to criticize their positions. “We don’t have many political affinities”notes Claude Raynal. In the private sector, the senator is none other than the minister's uncle, his mother's brother. To think that they fought on the same side twenty years ago…
The story of Laurent Saint-Martin and his uncle tells part of French political life. While Claude Raynal remained a socialist, his nephew turned to Emmanuel Macron upon his accession to the Elysée in 2017, accepting his slide ever further to the right without completely embracing him.
Within a government led by Michel Barnier, member of the Les Républicains party, and marked by the arrows of the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, against immigration and the rule of law, the “Mr. Budget” remains one of the last to assert himself on the left. “The second left, social-democratic, social-liberal, yes, I still claim to be part of it”he says Mondein an office of the National Assembly reserved for visiting ministers. An atypical positioning which has earned him approval from both the left and the right, but in no way guarantees the vote of his texts in Parliament.
“He’s flawless”
In front of the senators as in front of the deputies before, Laurent Saint-Martin appears as a valiant soldier sent to the fire on the most mined ground of the moment, that of the budget. Its mission: to regain control of a spiraling deficit. Which requires, first of all, to have a finance law adopted for 2025. A challenge, given the accumulated obstacles. Michel Barnier and Laurent Saint-Martin only had two weeks to leave their mark on the project left by former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. They delivered their copy ten days late than the legal deadline.
In session, above all, Laurent Saint-Martin has been struggling for weeks with the lack of a majority among the deputies and with the divisions within the troops supposed to support the Prime Minister. In the National Assembly, the New Popular Front (NFP) succeeded in transforming the Barnier budget from A to Z to make it an “NFP-compatible” text, supported by the left, criticized by the right, and finally rejected by a majority of elected officials. In the Senate, where the discussion begins, the atmosphere seems less hostile. But in the joint committee, there is no guarantee that a compromise will be found. And that the minister will not fall with the entire government in a motion of censure.
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