At 11 a.m. this Friday, still nothing. Fortunately, the journalist and political columnist from FranceInfo is understanding. After all, she knows what it is. Nathalie Saint-Cricq agrees to postpone our interview. By 2 p.m. at the latest, let’s decide. “We hope that this time it will be the right one”she quips. Nothing seems less certain, however. The French media report a very tense exchange between Emmanuel Macron and the man he was to appoint Prime Minister, François Bayrou. “Very angry”the president of the MoDem left the Elysée after 1 hour 45 minutes of discussions. Ouch…
But finally, around 12:30 p.m., the announcement finally comes: François Bayrou is the new French Prime Minister. And we can do our interview.
What do you think of the choice of François Bayrou to succeed Michel Barnier ?
This choice is a form of evidence. François Bayrou does politics in the good sense of the term, he knows the workings, the parties, the people perfectly. He is reasonable and calming. In addition, he is not ecstatic in front of Macron, he dares to tell him things, he has character. There is a kind of complementarity between the two men, which is all the more necessary as Macron is not necessarily very well inspired politically at the moment.
The sequence from this Friday is still very surprising, right?
Bayrou was angry, upset and shocked to have no news from Macron on Thursday. And that’s normal, it’s a personality that needs to be treated correctly. First, because he deserves it. Then, for his loyalty. This Friday, Bayrou therefore had the political reflex to question the presence of the MoDem in the presidential majority. Emmanuel Macron was however determined not to take it, but as their interview went badly and he was afraid, he changed his mind… And then, he really likes Bayrou.
We needed a figure capable of bringing the right and the left into agreement. Is it the right one this time?
I don’t think the socialists are going to shoot him. In an interview this week, Olivier Faure, the president of the PS, said he did not want Bayrou, but he did not declare that he intended to censor him either. With figures like Cazeneuve and Hollande, the reformist part of the PS is not going to be so scathing towards him. It will not be the same approach within La France Insoumise, which has already announced that it would censor even a goat or a polar bear. On the Republican side, I would say that Bayrou is “Retaileau compatible”.
“An arm of honor”, “The man for the job”: the appointment of François Bayrou provokes reactions, one party is already announcing its color
What will be the position of National gathering ?
The RN will not censor Bayrou right away either. Especially since Marine Le Pen respects him, for several reasons. First, when she encountered problems gathering signatures to run for president in 2022, he considered that she needed to be able to run and therefore proposed her signature. Before that, in 2018, when the RN had part of its public aid seized, Bayrou proposed launching a “democracy bank” to prevent the party from being in suspension of payments or from being obliged to seek out dubious financing. Finally, in the affair of the fictitious parliamentary assistants of the National Front, he took a position by asking whether it was indeed normal to prevent Marine Le Pen from running for president in the event of conviction. François Bayrou is therefore respected by the RN.
Do you think that France will succeed in emerging from this political crisis?
I don’t know… In any case, we would have been plunged into a much more serious crisis if Macron had named one of the people whose name was mentioned, like Sébastien Lecornu or Roland Lescure. Given the monstrous mess and the drama of the dissolution, Bayrou is the least bad solution. But we’ll see how that evolves. They all act like crazy people. The sequence that we experienced from Thursday to Friday, with Macron who kept pushing back the deadline, the arrival and departure of Bayrou… was crazy! It felt like a theater. This clearly shows that we are walking on our heads.
We have been witnessing since dissolution to partisan wars. Is there no longer any sense of common interest among French politicians?
It’s a different political generation. Barnier still can’t believe what happened to him, in fact. Speech is no longer the same as before. The unhealthy obsession with the presidential election is driving them totally crazy. Edouard Philippe is the only one to have been somewhat correct in this matter.
Isn’t Macron the solely responsible for this chaos in which is the French political world immersed?
Yes of course. He made a huge mistake. But something has to be done, we can’t just blame him. Bayrou’s appointment seems to go in the direction advocated by Macron, which is rather reassuring: he wants to take what is good on the left and what is good on the right to govern. There is a form of consistency with early Macronism.
Will the French president still have the opportunity to weigh in on the national scene or will Bayrou pull the cover much more for himself?
It’s not going to happen like that. Macron has an interest in Bayrou succeeding. If the Prime Minister fails, we cannot say that it is Bayrou’s fault. And there, the president will be forced to leave. Few people were talking about Macron’s impeachment six months ago. Now it’s become almost something everyone thinks about. So there won’t be any ego issues. The president has understood that he has no interest in taking a wrong step. If Bayrou screws up, he’s the next to jump.
Do you see the president to complete his five-year term ?
I don’t know at all… I still see a danger with the arrival of Bayrou at Matignon: he could try to get everyone to agree, by agreeing not to change much. We would then be facing a sort of end-of-reign government. It would be very risky.
Who benefits most from current vaudeville, with a view to the 2027 presidential election?
Person. Marine Le Pen believes that she did very well by censoring, because she moved up a few points in the polls. But, ultimately, people who were exasperated by the sequence will consider that the parties which sowed discord are not government parties. This is why the Socialist Party will be cautious now. We will witness a marginalization of LFI and the RN, who played their political card rather than trying to get the country out of the crisis. People will realize that, if we don’t have a budget, there will be concrete impacts on their daily lives. We also see that within the RN we are starting to discuss the position to adopt. Jordan Bardella made an exit which was immediately reframed by Marine Le Pen. They wonder if they should play the responsible party or not.
One thing seems clear however, the left front is well and truly dead and buried…
Yes. They discredited themselves. But if he gets to work now and gets things done, the PS can hope to regain some color. The socialists could, over time, become a government party again and not a sort of rump of the LFI. There are more points in common between Hollande and Bayrou than there are between Hollande and Mélenchon, we know that.
